a thousand years
by venusianeye
Summary: Help him, Jake English: you're his only hope.
1. Chapter 1

and all along i believed i would find you  
time has brought your heart to me;  
i have loved you for a thousand years.

-  
_  
she tells you with a touch of apology in her voice, stepping out of the little coven of flower-redolent hair and hushed female voices and long-lashed eyes that can't quite meet yours, that it's not really magic. she tells you it's a trick. a useful trick, but the end it's only sleight-of-mind. the best, she says, they can do._ __

you don't really care about that. you don't care if it's a con, if there is no spoon and you're down the rabbit hole, if you just hit your head in the twister and aunty em is trying to revive you, if it's all just another abstraction of the game. you figure it's just about as real as echeladders and sylladices and caches of grist. (and what does she know? she's a witch, your dear daft unsister, she's a little unreal anyway.) __

you don't care, because as far as you can tell, white science slithering over your limbs, a beam of gentle light that stretches the celluloid skin of real and not-real: __

you got your wish. __

you are the hero. __

and, __

if you are the hero, __

you can __

rescue __

Dirk. 

-

The Seer of Mind has to come with you, as a precaution and as your return ticket; her slate grey skin and blood orange eyes and her tendency to taste things instead of asking questions are all very alien, very odd to you, but you don't mind. Nothing is weird anymore; and she's helping you finish your quest, the only quest that matters.

The first place your senses pointed you, the location Jade hurled you, is breathtaking and hurts your eyes.

It's a cacophonous city of sliding doors and laughing voices and the smells of frying food, the sounds of carousing, a red light district fresh out of cyberpunk Heian Japan. Fox-headed girls in summer yukata mingle with perfectly ordinary Meiji businessmen and steam-powered samurai robots, eel vendors noisily hawk their wares, the sky is a drowsy purple-blue, and from behind sliding paper doors you see soft lanterns bob, you hear mellow voices and the strumming of koto and the clacking noise of lacquered dishes being shuffled around, liquor being unstoppered and poured, slightly gentler laughter. The closer you lean to the paper doors, the less you can smell the raw human and animal filth of the city; it's overcome by heady incense, deliberate perfume combed into long, heavy hair, the odors drowning each other out, and for a minute you struggle to breathe.

The weird thing is, everyone's wearing harlequin masks, except the two of you; and Pyrope has her pointy shades, so you're the only bare-faced idiot in a sea of secrets.

The Seer of Mind looks different, here, paler and a little more polished. She's trying to tell you something but you can barely hear her beneath the din; she has to yank on your shoulder.

"_I said, I'm waiting by the eel cart, so find me when you're done!_" she shrieks, and you give her a thumbs-up. You smile at her reflexively for no real reason, as if to reassure her that you got the message, that everything's under control; of course, it isn't. If it were, you wouldn't be here.

Wherever "here" is.

You don't know where to start, so you wander aimlessly for a little bit, feeling awkwardly out of place in your god-tier clothing. You sidestep puddles of suspicious cloudy water, you try not to feel weird when children stare at you with food in their mouths, and you eventually find an incline, so you head uphill. Uphill seems right.

Eventually you find an actual paved road, long square slabs of rock, and you worry for a second that you won't be able to find your way back to Terezi, but you find you're able to retrace your steps in your head, and this reassures you enough. You tell yourself to remember that you got onto the road between the red-painted building that looks like a pointy castle and the row of little gold monuments carved with a language you can't read.

You lick a finger, hold it out to test the wind, and keep heading uphill.

There's a time limit on this excursion, and it makes you terribly uneasy how the sickle moon never shifts in the sky, how the night appears to carry on forever when you know the sand's running out in the hourglass. You lope past statues carved like howling lions, you pass dirty taverns and expensive inns and as you ascend the slope, as you step higher, you start to notice that the crowd of pedestrians (who avoid staring you in the eyes, who shuffle to avoid you, who instill in you a sense of terrible unease) are better, or at least _ fancier_, dressed.

The sliding doors don't look so friendly, now; they're painted a bright cherry red and they look like the bars of a million cages, and you see people walking up to them and peering in like it's some kind of menagerie.

And then you're at the top of the hill, and it's a gigantic pompous castle of gilt and ivory and terrible red prison cells, and you realize, a little shocked and sick, panting for breath in the thick air, that these have to be brothels, or holding pens.

Because there are people behind the bars, people on display on pedestals like birds in cages, and you don't get what the hell you're supposed to be doing here or how the hell this is supposed to help your best (dearest - ) friend, you don't know what this _means._ Are you supposed to let them all out?

… no. No, your gut's telling you that that's not right. It's not that kind of movie. That's a tempting choice, but it's not the right interpretation of the scene.

Instead: There's no one walking inside the castle-brothel and there are no guards at the door, so you check to make sure your pistols are still at the ready and you walk in, tentatively peering around at the overwhelming splendor. There are too many details for anything to make sense, it's bewildering, it's like trying to play _Where's Waldo_ without ever knowing what Waldo is supposed to look like, a museum of still figures.

You are drawn to the cage just past the threshold that looks sort of like a dive bar stage, containing a thin, sexless creature slumped over the keys of a grand piano, wrapped in a waterfall of soft grey fabric.

"Um," you say, pushing your glasses up.

The empty eyes of a harlequin mask meet yours.

"I'm not really grasping what I'm supposed to be doing, hereabouts," you say. "Care to give a fellow a hint?"

The figure pauses, its mouth a thin pinched line. From the endless city below, you hear the echoes of a carnival; the inside of the castle is deathly silent, despite containing row after row of baffling cages, each housing a slumped figure and a whirlwind of color and shape.

"The game always adapts itself to suit the skills of the player," the figure says, its voice deep and gravel masculine, and you're a little surprised to see it speak, hear it talk. "What are your skills, English?"

"Sharpshooting," you say. "Movies."

"You have a knack for stories. That's what the witches gave you, English. Everything you see is part of the story, and it's your task to puzzle it out. You're the hero."

"What flick is this? I missed the cinema run," you try. The figure smirks at you, and you laugh, scratching your chin. "Okay, okay, a little too obvious. Can't make it too bloody easy for a chap, can you, by criminy."

"Criminy," the figure says, sighing almost wistfully. "I like that word."

"What can you tell me about Dirk?" you ask, stepping closer to the bars, staring the figure right in the mask-sockets.

"... No beard," he tells you, and strikes the highest note on the piano like a brief shout of sullen protest.

Useless _cretin._

"... Well. That's spectacularly helpful," you snap, and take a pace back. You don't have time for a cheshire-cat game of questions. The spell was supposed to make your quest easier; you wonder if you shouldn't have bothered, if you should have told Jade to hurl you in blind -

"_And not blue_," the figure hisses, frantically, shuffling forwards and grabbing the bars with a tenacity and fury that shock you. (Maybe the riddle of how this all works is trapping him, too.) His hands, you note, are pointy at the fingertips, shimmer wrongly in the dim light of the city and the moon.

"... _Bluebeard,_" you whisper. You've got it. You're on to something. You edge back.

"Only ever one wife," the figure tells you, coughing a little; its breath smells dry like laquer and dust, and its ribcage trembles beneath the fabric that shrouds it.

"Which one is his wife, then?" you guess, trying to crack the language of the story, and the figure laughs a little, shakes his head.

"All of us. Try again."

And that doesn't make sense, except - Bluebeard married each princess and murdered them one by one, in succession. He never had more than one wife at the same time. Parts of SBURB worked that way, too; there could only ever be one person wearing the ring... You think, in a moment of brilliant insight, that "no-beard" and "not-blue" refer to two different people.

… And you suddenly have a sinking, terrible feeling that you know what's behind the carnival masks. Gently, with your hands wide open to show you mean no harm, you reach up through the bars of the cage, and you untie the ribbon that keeps the mask pinned over the figure's eyes.

When it falls, noiseless, into the folds of cloth, you see the glossy black skin of a carapace; the eyes an awful, ghostly white.

"This is Derse," you breathe, aghast, and look out the door at the endless field of elysium, a seething tide of men and women and children and bishops and knights and rooks and one arch-regent, somewhere, hung from the sky; and every last one in a mask. "Dirk killed so _many _ of you."

"Not-blue was sort of the heavy hitter," your companion confides, "as far as genocide goes."

"... _black_ and blue, and not-blue. Noir?"

The dead carapace smiles at you. "Clever."

Now you know where you are, and what's going on, sort of, but you don't know how to fix it. Noir is already dead. You can't murder him and rescue his "wife". How do you solve a story that's already ended? Perhaps you should rethink your questions. Challenge your assumptions.

"What are wives?" you try.

Your dead carapace friend struggles to communicate the concept without breaking the rules of the universe. "Trap yourself in an arbitrary definition, and the soul will conform," he says. "The goldfish grows to fit the bowl. But - one tear fell, and became a pearl on her dress, and by that he _knew her from the others_! A single feather fell. A single smile bent the bow of her lips, and he knew her."

"Er. You've lost me."

"Not a _wife__,_" he tells you, growing impatient. "Not a bride!"

Your stomach sinks. "I don't have to _kill _ him, do I?" you whisper, fear biting at you. "I'm not Bluebeard?" You don't know how you'll do it, if you have to kill him to save him. You don't know how you'll manage it.

"No," he rasps gently at you. He reaches through the bars, and lays his palm gently on your shoulder. "Look at the setting."

"... Whorehouses," you say, and blush. "Masks, as well. So they're all more or less identical."

He nods, gravely. "And how will you know him from the others?"

That's a good point. How _ will _ you know your chaste Prince from the garden of indulgence? Moreover, how do you know him from anyone else? What's the name for the gentle hum of recognition that sings out inside you, the thing that means you'll always, always pick him out in a crowd?

"He's the Prince of Heart," you say, and blush a little harder, because if you were the sort of gent to keep mustachioes you'd be twirling them so nervously you'd start a fire. You're sure of that.

The carapace hits you in the arm. "Think, stupid. Caged, uncaged. Free and bound. Married and unwed. Named and unnamed. Titled, and untitled, and how do you make a change? How does the story end?"

"... He's a _ prince,_ " you say, slowly, "and this is a castle, and - shit. Is there a throne room? Of course there is, there's always a bloody throne room in these fanciful sex palaces, it's probably par for the bloody golf course -"

"Go!" your dead friend hisses, slapping you and hitting several angry discordant keys to express his urgent displeasure.

The pathways twist and turn, you travel further and further into the castle, surrounded by cells with silent, ghostly prisoners. You're in a cold sweat. How long have you been here? Shit, you can't have much time left. You pick up the pace until you're going at a dead run; there's only one long, terrible corridor to follow.

This is the question:

_H__ow was this piece of Dirk torn loose?_

The answer to that is the answer to why it's _here_, an answer to why this place looks the way it does.

You think, as you tumble helter-skelter around the last bend in the corridor, that you have finally wrestled the raging mystery to the ground. It'll only take another swift jab or two to knock it out cold.

And then you're in the throne room, and there's a sword.

There is a sword, fast in the center of the hall, above a raised dais. A thousand thousand chains strangle it, wrap about the hilt, about the blade, stretching off into every corner of the abyssal room's plunging ceiling, bolted taut to every inch of the walls. It isn't buried in anything; this samurai sword is no Excalibur. The point barely brushes the cold stone floor; unimaginable pull from every direction, like a condemned man in the act of being drawn, keeps it hovering, immobile and painfully straight, in perfect suspension.

It glistens like the soft lip of a princess bent in a futile smile, like a single tear shed in the absence of notice, like a single extra pearl on a dress made of midnight - and you know. You know, the way you knew there was something amiss in the first place.

Sweat drying in the cool air of the oubliette, you walk forwards with confidence.

The chains part for you. They rustle and slide and close up again behind you, as if they're sheepish, as if they're sentient of the wrongfulness of their imprisonment. In no time at all, you are before the sword itself, standing easily on the flat top of the dais.

You're still a little short of breath; you smile at it, and laugh a little, exhilarated at your success. You've got this one in the bag .

"Somewhere along the way," you murmur to the katana, "you got a damned funny idea about princes, and what princes were meant to sacrifice, and it broke you apart. Holds you here still, chap."

It's a little unfair of you to lecture; the blade can't talk back like Dirk can. (Could. Right, time limit.) So you smile at it, and you kneel, and you offer the hilt your hand.

The carapace gave you a few too many hints. You know exactly what to say.

_"__Will you marry me?"_ you whisper, eyes bright with hope.

-

_the chains fall apart, and the blade leaps to your grip, like a bird seeking shelter in a storm, and for a moment you are bowled plum sideways by your success, you did it, you did it, and it feels alive and fragile in your hand like a tiny heart, struggling to beat._

and then the castle begins to fall apart around you, stones crashing and narrowly avoiding your head - the sword _ **jumps** , jerks your arm up, forcibly deflects a falling piece of ceiling - you run for your fool life, with the most precious burden you've ever carried. ruination dogs your footsteps; you flee for your life, panting harshly to escape the maze - all those people in cages, you can't -_

at the doorway you cry out at the carapace who helped you, screaming something about _ **come with me, come on** , and he laughs, shaking his head at you, and calls back:**jake english, get out of our grave.**_

and then you're out, careening downhill, the entire world crumbling and shattering at the sundered seams, like the noise of the sky falling, and Terezi is there, she came to get you, she grabs you by the wrist and screams _ **do it now, Harley** , and_

everything winks out of existence, even you. __

- _  
_  
In the end, everyone made it to God Tier. Everyone got their whimsical pajamas, everyone unlocked their potential, everyone matured a little, grew up a lot, aged prematurely. And when the game ended you all watched your beautiful new universe stitch itself into being and you breathed easier, together, one big coleslaw of allies and friends and fellows.

But something was wrong with Dirk.

Something was _wrong_ with Dirk.

He functioned just fine until the end of the game, like a machine performing a a routine, and it hurt inside you like a constant tooth ache, watching him slowly spin down into akinetic torpor, watching him slowly tick to a halt. The visible signs of his sickness began as soon as your new, shared universe began to bloom in the void; it worsened. Jade confirmed your suspicions when she showed you the crumbling old planets in the palm of her hand, and you shouted that she _couldn't __ let them do that, there were parts of Dirk left there._

Why couldn't anyone else see? It was so obvious to you, now that you'd strengthened that knack of yours for knowing him. There were so many pieces missing. He'd stretched himself so thin, and you'd laughed along when he'd said "I'll rest when I'm _dead,_ " but then he slowly started to fade.

He shouldn't have been able to fade. And it turned out that _stretch_ was the wrong word for what Dirk did.

Dirk _ splintered.  
_  
You don't know how he did it, this fracturing of the self. _No one _ knows how he did it, save Dirk himself.

But you can _ sense_ it, sense it as discretely and as firmly as a pebble clutched in your palm; it's only the palm is your brain and the pebble is a lost, wandering piece of Dirk, pulling you towards it like a lodestone.

You think it stands to reason that you're the only joe with the guns and the bravado to fix it.

You wake, after that first narrowly successful escapade on a fever dream of Derse, under the ministrations of yet another witch - Feferi is quite the gal, isn't she! Jane is completely exhausted keeping Dirk's body from failing on him; she sleeps twenty hours at a stretch, and still barely has the energy to eat soup. You're all fighting against one last glitch, one final quest, trying to do the impossible (just as usual).

When you can sit up you cough and sputter, and you feel a _weight _ that wasn't there before, something heavy in your soul. You tell everyone fussing at you to kindly take a flying fuck at the _moon_ , and you wobble into the sick bay, where they're letting Dirk lie flat on his back, as still and waxen as a statue.

You didn't _ have _a sick bay, before Dirk began to die. Everyone's aware that there's something _ wrong_ now, you think darkly to yourself, and they're looking to you for a miracle.

For a minute you gape like a sucker over his freshly alchemized hospital gurney, because you're not sure _how_ to go about giving Dirk his _self_ back; and then you remember you could see things perfectly fine when you were brain-scrambled, and you _yank_ on the magics that Rose loaned you until you're half awake, half asleep, a dazed semi-conscious sleepwalker.

You can see the ghost of a sword in your right hand.

Gently, you lay it on Dirk's chest, and try to slap yourself back into properly awake.

He takes a _breath_, a real breath, and a touch of color returns to him, and his eyelids flutter open and all you can think is that you bloody well missed those crazy tangerine peepers of his, you missed him terribly. "Where the hell did you_find_ it?" he rasps at you, eyes watering, a faltering hand rising to his sternum in wonder.

You discover that you're gripping his other hand with your own.

"Never mind that, what was it?" you ask him, urgently, before he falls unconscious again. He smiles up at you, a touch of exasperation in his chalky pallor.

"Little shred of... decency, maybe," he tells you. You're not sure if he's having you on or if it's one of his ultra-ironic moments of real sincerity, staring up at you from a small square pillow and a poker face so weary you're afraid for him.

Twenty minutes later you're stumbling out of the sick bay again, because there's only so long you can comb the sweaty hair out of his face and listen to his ragged sleep-breathing before your feelings start to really cripple you, bending you in half, eyes watering.

He never confessed.

Not once was the issue pressed; heroics were had, adventures were shared, victory was celebrated, and he kept his peace.

There was a time you didn't want him to tell you he had _ feelings_ for you; there was a time you were content to let the issue rot on the back burner indefinitely. You were a coward and a fool, only a few scant months ago. Now - chrissakes, now it's different.

Jade shows you, in the bright hallway, the little planets of the old sessions that she is straining to keep together with all her might. She shows you that what used to be Derse has crumbled into nonexistence, like the universe it came from. You have the strength to whistle, and give her a gaptoothed, roguish grin.

"Hooo-eee. Will that happen _every_ time, you reckon? Indiana Jones makes it out by the skin of his teeth?"

"Probably," she says, quiet and miserable, and you wish there were something you could say. "I'm _sorry_, I -"

"Don't fret," you try. "I've got the devil's own luck and a whole bevy of witches on my side. It'll be fine."

You shush her, like a gentleman ought to, when she starts to cry, and stretch your senses. You can't let yourself crumble down and cry, you can't let yourself relax that much, because Dirk isn't whole yet.

_You are__ not done._


	2. Chapter 2

"What does it look like?" you ask.

"Huh?"

"When you... you know. When Lalonde puts me under, and Jade tosses us."

Terezi licks her lips slowly, a thoughtful gesture, and continues to toy with her colored chalk. She's drawing something vague and blurry, something with curls and shapes; you're waiting for Jade and Rose and the rest of the coven to finish eating, so that you can 'go under' again.

You're both sitting on one of the many edges of the vast plateau surrounding the Door; the Door that you can't open yet. Miz Pyrope doesn't like to go near it; she doesn't like to be near Dave, who stands like a marble statue, his hand on the doorknob, slowing the new universe down. (_Can't stop it, it'll die_, he had slurred, weary as fuck. _ I can only tap the brakes a little._) He's buying time for his unbrother - buying time for _you._

"Uh. We don't actually _go_ anywhere," she tells you after a pause. You blink at her, still exhausted, still a little dazed after the weird trip to not-Derse.

(You find yourself constantly nudging against the little seed of magic that Rose put in your head; like you're constantly tonguing the gap left by a missing tooth.)

"We don't?"

"The ladies are just tossing our minds! Our cute little heads stay put," she explains, which kinda hurts your brain to contemplate until you realize that it's totally like Cameron's _Avatar!_ Or maybe the _Matrix_. Or - "It's weird, for me, because I can sort of See the real place, but the hallucinations you're seeing are stacked on top of it and they're obviously a lot more vivid to me, so it gives me a headache... but it's nothing to worry about. All you really need to know, Mister English," she insists, grinning wickedly and stabbing you in the chest with her pointer finger, "is that this shit _works._"

"All right, partner," you say, grinning back on reflex, even though she's blind. "I'll take it on faith!"

The tiny alien girl looks a little bit sad, and lost.

"Of course you will," she murmurs, and grips her red chalk tightly in her fist.

-__

it's different this time, it feels like you're being plunged underwater, like you're falling in slow motion, like you're falling through time, not space- 

-

The air is thick with humidity, aggressively hot, sticking your hair to your face and swimming through your lungs, and you groan, squinting, against the harsh midsummer sun. Terezi makes a weird shrieking noise.

Once your eyes have stopped watering and you've adjusted to the light, you see you're in a thin, patched cotton yukata; your pistols (and your glasses) are gone, but even this flimsy cloth feels like too much in the overpowering heat.

(Japan, _again? _ At least you know you're on Dirk's trail - albeit the cold trail of a thirteen-year-old Dirk, who actually gave two shits about Japan and anime. He got you onto a couple of Japanese directors you'd really liked, though, and you'd binged on horror flicks all summer. You feel a tug of nostalgia.)

"Miz Pyrope?" you call out, looking around; you're on a dirt road next to some sun-bleached marshes, the reeds towering over your head and buzzing with millions of flies. Terezi has found the only source of shade, a scraggly little tree that dapples her with patches of light, and she lies crumpled beneath it, using the long sleeves of her robe like a shield. The outfit change took her shades, as well; apparently the rules of this story are a lot more strict.

"_Shiiiiiit, ow_," she whines, and you can see her eyes leaking a pale teal that might be tears but might be -

"Oh, _tits and buggery,_" you curse, frantic, rushing to shield her from the light with your body, leaning over her shivering form. "I forgot you folk were nocturnal - I can make you, a fan or something with the reeds, or a parasol, so just -"

"No, no, calm the fuck down, just stand right there and give me a minute," she gripes, clenching her jaw and squeezing her eyes shut.

There's a weird pop, and then Terezi looks different, her hair a flickering mess of fire and amber, her horns transformed into long, vulpine ears. Her face is painted with a thick white waxy paste; her whole body below the neck is drowned in a white silk kimono, and there are _nine tails_ curling out behind her, waving and shimmering like dragonfly wings in the harsh sun.

She straightens, inspecting her altered form, pushing you back with a gentle shove. "Hmm. Still too fucking hot, but I guess this is sort of amenable."

"How in the _blue blazes _did you manage that?" you ask, gaping at her. She doesn't appear to be standing, but _hovering.  
_  
"I meddled, duh," she snips, wrinkling her nose and sticking her tongue out at you. At least her tongue looks the same - long and menacing. "I was _hatched _a meddler. All right, English! Time to do your thing."

'_Your thing_' she says, like you're some sort of expert, her hands on her narrow hips, and you sweat. Uneasily, you stare at the dirt road, which seems to go on for miles in both directions, up to the limits of your poor vision.

"Do you know where we are, this time?" you ask. Worth a shot.

"Not a fucking clue," she tells you, one of the fox ears twitching back in irritation.

Oh, perfect. You try to think. "... Can I borrow your coin, then? I'll give it right back. Scout's honor."

She blinks at you, and then fishes around in the sleeve of her elaborate costume, finally pulling it out with a flourish. You flip to decide which direction to take; the coin points you down the path where the road seems twistier, and you sigh, giving it back to her. All right, then.

The journey is rough; at first you try to shuffle along in your wooden sandals, but they hurt your feet worse than the stones in the road, so you take them off and throw them into the marsh, Terezi cackling unhelpfully.

You trudge onwards through the dust and the heat waves blurring your eyesight. Strangely, even though the sun dips to the rim of the sky and the cicadas drone and your yukata is drenched in sweat, you don't feel thirsty; the smells and sounds and the oppressive temperature are, in a way, electrifying. It's invigorating to be somewhere with a sky, again; you know it's not technically real, but that doesn't mean it isn't_ real._

At a bend in the road, you see something struggling, a flash of white, and you blink.

It's not a heat mirage - it's a bird, a massive beautiful thing with a long, curved beak. You realize you're holding your breath.

It's rolling, in panic, in the dust of the road, but when it sees you it freezes. You squint, and you see the noose wrapped around its legs, the massive stake in the ground; you're overwhelmed with pity.

"Aha," Terezi says, clicking her tongue disapprovingly. "Alligator trap."

"Poor blighter," you say, softly, walking up to it and wondering if it'll try to peck your stupid eyes out. It doesn't; it lies there, still and wary, as you kneel beside it. You put your hand out towards the trap - it pecks, savagely hard, at your hand, and you hiss with the pain. "Hang on a tic, I'm trying to help," you scold it, tugging at the leather straps.

It chirps at you sullenly, as if it understands, and stops trying to stab your hands off.

"Good lad," you tell it, patting it reassuringly on the head. "Have you out in a jiffy."

Terezi helps you, with her knowlege of nooses, but freeing the bird is incredibly slow going. The knots are so tight that your hands bruise, tugging them apart; the ropes are leather and horsehair and they're coiled so tightly, drenched with blood from rubbing against the bird's unshielded skin. You wish you could cut them, but you don't have anything sharp; you have to pull them apart with aching fingertips in the poor light of sunset, and you curse and sweat and wish a thousand times that you had your glasses.

Eventually, however - "pull that last little loop, over there - no, English, that one -"

And you've done it!

You kneel in the dust and the dirt of the road, and laugh, because you're exhausted and sticky with sweat and grime but you're happy, dizzy with your success, and you help the bird to its wobbly feet.

"There you are, then, sir," you tell the bird.

The bird makes a sweet, low noise in the back of its throat, and_ bows _to you, spreading its wings wide like a gentleman and lowering its head.

And then there's a great rush of wind, and it's up in the air, flying off, its massive wings carrying it beyond your vision, beyond the limits of your sky, one beat at a time.

"Ungrateful little shit," Terezi mutters, and you laugh. You don't really mind. It was meant to be free, after all; but you miss it.

"Onwards," you tell her, nudging her shoulder. In the dim twilight, her meddled appearance glows, softly, giving you scant light to see the road.

Eventually, you pick your way towards a ramshackle house on stilts. When you knock on the door, you discover it's empty - and the sandals you threw away earlier are arranged, in a neat accusing pair, behind the door.

"I think this is for me," you say, gesturing at the house, looking over your shoulder for Terezi.

Only she isn't there anymore.

And the cicadas are so loud.

_Time limit,_ you remember, and although it's still incredibly hot, you feel cold down to your bones.

Without Terezi, you're well and truly fucked.

You don't even know where this is, you just know that it involved rescuing a - a what? A crane, you think. You're not sure. You aren't too up to date with Asian cinema. You don't know this story, and you haven't found Dirk, yet, or whatever piece of him got lost here.

"Hahaha! Well, this is a fine mess," you tell the inside of the empty two-room house, sliding the door shut behind you. "Right then, Jake, she'll be back for you eventually, so in the meantime, let's... let's just do what seems sensible, all right?"

Silence answers you. You feel like a fool.

Abruptly, you are thirsty, and hungry as a bear in spring. You manage to find an empty jug; in the back of the house, which is a long stretch of solid, grassy gry ground, there's a hill with a well, and eventually you manage to pull up a bucket of water, sloshing half of it out on the way up. The rope cuts your hands, the water tastes like mineral cold.

You drink until your stomach hurts, and, in a bit of a daze, you watch the night fall.

"Nobody here to help," you murmur, and you wish you had your pistols with you so you could at least feel ready for whatever this place throws at you. Instead you're unsure, anxious, and you're guessing you've been thrust into the role of a dirt-poor peasant. You don't even know where the rest of the people are, the people who built that alligator trap and hurt the bird.

You aren't too worried, though. There's a calling, inside you, that knows where Dirk is, and it tugs insistently beneath your breastbone.

You don't feel alone, as long as that pull remains.

On the hard reed-mat floor, you dream of feathers.

-

_he comes to the door in the morning with his head bowed, hair loose as straw about his head, holding a bolt of fabric, waking you with a knock. he's barefoot, he's wearing a simple white yukata and carrying a small bag, and he walks just like Dirk and he looks just like him, and his feet are dirty and his body thin with hunger and when you look at him -_

when you look into those orange eyes, something sweet and sad and terrible lurches in your heart and you're on your feet, you've grabbed him by the forearms, you are falling apart.

"Strider? Christ on a pogo stick, Dirk, is it you?" you ask desperately, your voice a wretched croak, because you don't care any more if feeling like this makes you a fruit, you don't care if anyone laughs at you, and you don't care if Dirk is a boy; you just want your friend back. you want him living and breathing and real, and there's no point in pretending this isn't about love, anymore.

it's not like the movies. 

_it's not like any romance you've ever seen. it's gritty and bloody and terrible, and it composes or frames so much of you, so many pieces of you, that if you tried to subtract it you'd be left empty - and he did it on purpose, and left you like this, and it isn't fair, not any of it, not one bit._

he smiles at you, a delicate thing that takes your breath away.

"Jake," he says, tilting his head, setting your hopes aflame, and then the rest of the sentence is in a language you don't understand a word of, a language that sounds a little like birdsong.

鶴と申します_he tells you, and he bows, kissing the inside of your wrist, where your pulse jumps like thunder._

your heart is breaking.

"Just like your animes," you tell him, your shoulders sagging. you lean your forehead against his shoulder and try not to weep with frustration.  
_  
he keeps on smiling, understanding nothing._

-

It takes about a week for you to plot out your surroundings and solidify your understanding that no one's coming to rescue you. There's an ocean about three hours away on foot, an utterly deserted town and a long pier; you find fishing line and nets, and after losing about twenty worms you manage to catch something, a pathetic little fish about ten inches long. You're hungry enough to eat a horse.

Although you can't speak each other's language, you can certainly make gestures and point. He shows you that there's a loom in the second room, communicates its purpose to you by kicking you out of the house and then letting you back in about six hours later to show you the inch of fabric he's made, the loom strung and pretty like a harp. He's exhausted and pleased with himself. You clap him on the shoulder, and offer him one of the fish you managed to catch.

One afternoon he uses a bit of firewood to draw two stick figures in the dirt, holding hands; he points at you, and then points at himself, and then points at the drawing, and makes an expectant face. You offer him your hand; he takes it, and he uses some of the downy white fabric to wrap a bandage around the wound the crane left, after carefully washing it clean. You're touched.

You tell him_ thank you, I don't, I can't really, you don't understand what I'm saying, but I -_ He grins, draws a picture of a fish in the dirt next to the firepit, and points meaningfully to his open mouth.

"You wanker, catch them yourself," you tell him, crossing your arms, and he laughs, a low and rattling noise that makes you feel warm all the way down in your belly.

He's pulled to the weaving incessantly, like a gravitational urge.

One day he drags you inside after another long, painfully boring day of fishing, and he shows you a brand-new set of clothes, dazzling white and red and lovely, and you realize he must have been working on them, not wanting you to see. You choke up a bit.

Your yukata is a patched, filthy mess, and so is the weird twisted fabric you use instead of boxers; he's made you a set of folded trousers and a shirt that wraps around your torso, and a wide belt.

"_Hakama,_" he enunciates clearly, pointing to the trousers, looking shabby and exhausted. "_Haori._" The red coat. "_Obi_." The belt.

"Thank you," you say, feeling somewhat overwhelmed with gratitude, and show him your net. Any idiot can fish; what he's doing is _special_. Everything Dirk ever does, in any incarnation, is special. "I caught you six tuna and a jellyfish."

The dream of Dirk smiles at you, takes the net, points to himself. "家内," he says, the corner of his eyes twitching a little like they do when he's making a joke. You blink.

He draws a little sketch of a house, and a stick figure under the roof, and says it again.

"_Kanai_?" you repeat, slowly, pointing at him, and he sighs and shakes his head. He presses a kiss to your forehead, takes the fish inside, shoulders slumped low. You follow him, once you've recovered from the weakness in your knees and the blush has died down a little beneath your sunburn.

"I know, I know, I'm a real dunderhead. Sorry for missing the joke," you tell him, ruefully. "I'll bet it was a thigh-slapper."

He snorts a little, says そんな顔作るな, and pinches your face.

-  
_  
sometimes at night he sleeps on his side on the straw-filled mattress he made, on the sheet he wove, and you watch the rise and fall of his chest, you smell the straw, you smell the smoke from the food he cooked, you hear his soft and gentle breathing, and you wonder: how can this not be real?_

you should be wary, you should be on guard against it, but you aren't, you just laugh and eat his fish and hold his hands and kiss his needle-pricked fingertips and make faces at each other and he draws pictures of swords in the sand, when he thinks you aren't paying attention. you are too physically affectionate with him. you are too touchy-feely. you don't think about it.

then, one morning, he refuses to eat.  


今度は最後 he tells you, hollows under his eyes, and he slides the door to the weaving room shut.

You don't go fishing that day.

You wait.

You wait all day, all night, all morning and all day again, and all night, and still all you can hear from the weaving room is the shuttlecock and the hush of fabric, and if you strain, something that sounds a lot like the breathing of a person in pain.

When you look inside yourself, when you collect yourself and strain to feel, the sense within you tells you that whatever you're looking for is slowly coming_ closer,_ inch by inch.

You think about how even though you're hungry, you have to fish your own food out of the ocean. You think about how in this little pseudo-universe, patched clothes have to be mended by hand, about how even though this shadow of Dirk wants a sword, he can't just wish one into existence.

And you wonder, like cold water in your face, where he got the_ dye _to make your coat red.

You wonder, in something like terror, _where he got the thread to weave with._

The dawn cracks on the horizon, and something inside of you leaps because the piece of Dirk you've been looking for, the piece of Dirk you came here to get, has arrived, and it is in the room before you: the room you aren't allowed to enter.

-

_so you pull open the door the tiniest of cracks and you press your eye to the gap and you see_

the crane:

pluck out his own feathers and gasp, in pain,

and with his beak, he weaves them into the loom

(and on his chest, spots of red

blood - )

his wings, a tattered parody.

you

scream

-

"Dirk," you roar, yanking the door open, and the crane freezes, blinks at you.

"Why," you begin, fumbling for words in anguish, choking. "Oh, you _damnable _fool, you piteous chunderfucking idiot, why did you have to -"

The bird trembles; calls out to you once, low and sad, and points at the fabric with one unfurled wing, head bowed low. The air shivers, his feathers ripple into nonbeing; in human form, he is kneeling, head down, pointing at the loom.

You look at what he's been weaving for the past two days and two nights.

It looks like a tapestry, like it's meant to be hung on a wall, or used as a banner; a microcosm of red ones and red zeroes in painstaking detail, _his feathers and blood_, and blazoned proudly atop them, in beautiful crimson, is the Auto Responder.

"... All this," you say, your voice shaking, "for a pair of fucking _shades_."

ごめん, he says, weary and pale and bloodless, taking the tapestry off the loom and carefully pressing it into your chest, where your fingers numbly catch it. He stares, unblinking and unapologetic, into your eyes. 仕方がなかった.

You understand. _He's sorry. It couldn't be helped_.

"You, you should have been a little more careful," you say, "what you put your soul into, Dirk Strider." Your voice is a ruin. Your vision is even blurrier than it should be; fuck, you don't want to cry.

He lays a hand softly on your face, and convulses again; feathers swallow his skin, overtaking his familiar body and contorting it back into the prison of the crane. The bird runs its beak through your hair.

In a powerful rush of air and the beating of wings, he flies out and up, endlessly, into the sun, until even in the yard, looking up, you can see only the sky.

You fall to your knees, vision a mess of tears.

The world begins to pixelate, at the edges, and vanish.

(_No, you don't want to leave, you don't want it to be over -_)

- _**Gotcha, Jakey,**_ is the last thing you hear.

-

_the sick bay, and Feferi is holding your hand; and Terezi and Roxy and Rose and Jade and John are hovering, wan and exhausted, at the foot of your bed, and you feel around in your head for the bit of Dirk you pulled, making sure you still have it, carefully pressed to your chest; it's there. you didn't lose it, even though you blacked out._

"Morning, sunshine! You kinda stopped breathing, for like, a week," John says, awkwardly. "I, uh, I had to help Feferi out a little, she's been keeping you alive but she's not that great with human landdweller breathing, I mean, you don't have gills, so -"

"I lost you," Terezi says, her tiny pointy face wracked with guilt. "I shouldn't have tampered with anything, the dream spat me out, I'm so sorry."

"Where's Dirk," you say.

Roxy is by your side with an open bottle of wine and no glass in sight; she rests a hand on your shoulder, she says: "He's okay. You, on the other hand, are not looking too hot. I had to do this fucking three-legged race with TZ and shit, Jake, you were, I don't even know where you were, I only caught you when you started to vanish, cause you were finally in my fucking ballpark, right? The void. Any ideas, smartass? Where were you?"

"Auto-Responder," you mumble, slowly pulling apart the dream logic into something resembling sense. "Uh, there was a piece of Dirk stuck inside him, I -" You feel a little twinge of your own guilt. "I didn't kill AR, did I?"

"Children don't die when you kill their parents," Rose says, calmly, before anyone can panic. "Artifical intelligence grows and learns on its own. It'll be fine."

"Right-o, then," you say, and you ignore their questions. "Where the hell is Dirk?"

-

They try to keep you in bed, but eventually you tussle your way upwards and stagger over to the cot where Dirk is lying comatose and Jane is holding his hand, because like Feferi, she is Life. You can actually see it, the circuit of energy flowing from her into him and back into her again, like she's his artificial heart, and you couldn't see these things before, but you guess you couldn't hope to have a spell buried in your brain without some collateral damage.

You don't have to try to envision the square of fabric; you just have to tilt your perception a little, like a Magic Eye puzzle, and you gently place it over his face. It's not a shroud, but it's a depiction of a pair of sunglasses; you figure that's where it ought to go.

And you can see him absorb it, this time, a little flash of light, and - it feels like you're re-assembling a cracked vase. It feels like you can see where the holes are, and you've just slotted one missing piece back into place, where it _fits_, and he opens his eyes again, and you nearly weep with relief.

"What in _cockeyed tarnation _did you put in the auto-responder, you wretched fucking weeaboo?" (It blurts out of your mouth. You had intended to say something nice, but you're in bloody emotional turmoil, here.)

"... All I knew," Dirk slurs out, smiling a little at you and gripping your hand tight, "of empathy. All my care."

"You dumb piece of shit," you say, blinking furiously.

"Don't cry, you dumbass," Dirk tells you, running his thumb over the back of your hand, a little sparkle of amusement in his clementine eyes, and his eyelids flicker.

"_Don't -_" you cry, but it's too late.

He's under again, sleeping like the dead.

Nobody disturbs you or tries to pull you from his side, not until you've stopped making noise like you're dying.

_it's going faster, Jade tells you, and shows you a trembling palm full of ruined worlds, crumbling into dust. _

_you are running out of time._

* * *

NOTES: i left them in characters in the fic body because Jake can't even parse them, but here are not!Dirk's lines, translated:  
鶴と申します = i am called Crane  
家 内 = kanai = "wife", the joke is that it's written "inside the house" and ha ha, not!dirk is stuck inside the house all the time weaving AR. you don't actually use it to address your wife, though.  
そんな顔作るな = don't make that kind of face.  
今度は最後 = this is the last one.  
(and Jake correctly guesses the meaning on the last bit.)

the folk tale is "tsuru no ongaeshi", or, in english, it's commonly called "the crane wife"._  
_


	3. Chapter 3

_'send m__e in,' you say, blinking dizzily. terezi is at your side, mute and grim._

_'i think we need to talk about options,' rose says._

_'send me in,' you say._

_'jake, nobody wants to give up on him, but you need to consider the possibility that whatever we're doing might not work,' rose says. the cold white plaza stretches out behind her. you don't look towards the door._

_and you don't answer that. silently, terezi takes your hand._

_'we're all exhausted. we can't hold the zenith of the new universe off indefinitely. we didn't have time for you to spend a week out of comission, and we don't have time for something like that to happen again,' rose says, and you nudge a little, in your mind, at the magic she gave you, like a tooth with roots sinking further and further into you, and you think you probably don't like rose._

_'send me in,' you say, because she's pausing and looking at you, and she purses her lips._

_'you're not listening, jake -'_

_well of course you aren't listening, you think bemusedly to yourself, and you reach at the little tooth of magic inside you and you squeeze terezi's hand and -_

_yank -_

* * *

"_THE FUCK DID YOU DO_?" Terezi is screaming in your ear and hitting your shoulder, and you groan, curling in on yourself in what feels like dirt. You feel like you just got struck by lightning. Everything aches raw and for a minute or two it's all you can muster to breathe, regular, in and out, and that's -

That's the smell of saltwater brine, you'd recognize ocean air anywhere. Your little stunt worked. And you have the Seer of Mind with you this time, provided she doesn't do anything stupid to get herself ejected again.

(You're in your own clothes, thank Providence; you feel the weight of your pistols at your hips, and you relax minutely.)

Cringing a little, you peel your eyes open, and crane your head up.

And oh, allmighty. It takes your breath away.

* * *

_a city on the water, a proper, massive, honest to jiminy city. an armada of islands on the waves. little city squares, blocks of buildings and shops and apartments and everything you'd expect out of post-apocalyptic Venice Camelot New York; high-rise buildings that challenge the skies, floating sedately on their individual rafts, cobblestones that snake past open canals of seawater, a minaret, buildings that careen like waves upwards in a thrust of mad architectural exuberance._

_buoys and gondolas and smoke rising, and it's all like a monochrome dream; and you see people, you see tall shapes in billowy clothes like shrouds, all gray, all of it._

_all iron and old sodden wood; silver sails flying from pewter rooftops, glass and cement and this whole thing couldn't possibly stay afloat if it were real, it's preposterous, it's too zany and weird to believe, and yet here you are, a lonely blot of color on a tiny little raft that carries you, and Terezi, and a silver aspen, leaves falling softly to the black loam._

_if you turn to face the waves, you see you're hemmed in by a floating wall._

_"Amazing," you breathe, and beside you Terezi scowls._

_"I won't call down the witches just yet, Jake," she says, earnest even in her disapproval. "I'll go along with this ridiculous nonsense, but I'm going to declare a time limit, all right? Three nights, and then I'm flagging Lalonde and Harley down, and we can just -."_

_gulls fly overhead and cry, over and over._

_"We have to find him," you tell her. "I won't leave until we do."_

_"It," she corrects you. the line of worry in her forehead cuts a little bit deeper._

_"Him," you counter. you place a hand over your chest, shut your eyes, and listen with your heart._

_he's here. the stones, the gulls, the whole of the place sings out to you, an answering call to the pull. the pull is in your bones, in your marrow, in your soul._

_if this fool's escapade can be called a labor of love, then love is surely this: your hand, towards him, forever outstretched._

_"Look, English. There's a fine line between optimism and stupidity," Terezi snipes, elbowing you in the side. she is quite mean, and quite stern with you. you probably like her for it._

_you laugh a little, and offer her the only thing you can: your smile._

_"I was always daft, Miz Pyrope."_

_if you weren't, it'd wouldn't work._

_only a pure, bucktoothed idiot could put such faith in happy endings._

* * *

"We have to be sensible about this," she says, and you make a vaguely agreeable noise in her direction. You're skipping from floating island to floating island in timed jumps; they're chained together around the city in concentric circles, like the rings around a tree. Terezi waits for your move. You sometimes forget she's blind. "We have to be methodical. I don't like the way this place feels, it's full of uncertain ground -"

"It'll be fine," you say; you leap, grunt, and land, at last, on the pier. No one seems to be paying any attention to you at all; the faint figures you saw at a distance have stayed shadowy and insubstantial.

You're a little overwhelmed by the size and scale of this place.

"I'm awfully lucky."

She follows you a moment later, a little scrabbly bag of bones and spite and immense disdain. "If your plan is to be_ lucky, _Jake English, we are going to have a problem," she hisses, practically stamping her feet. "You're getting unstable. If you can't use your head, we're both fucked."

"I'm sorry," you say, and you mean it, you're actually quite rueful. It's just so damn hard to think, with the thrum of Dirk all around you, in the dirty pavement below you and in the claustrophobic rise of cement buildings just ahead. You're a bloodhound in a butchery. You don't know where to point yourself in the slightest. "Errr, can you sort of... cast about and check for minds?" you ask your partner. "I think this bit of Dirk might be complicated enough - or big enough? To actually think things."

"Huh? Sure. Worth a try," Terezi says, and shuts her blood-red eyes, frowning a little. For a few minutes she just stands there, wobbling a little, in pure concentration.

You figure you probably look just about as silly, when you cast about for Dirk, so you stifle your chuckle. Glass houses, and all that.

"It's weird," she says, finally, opening her eyes and scrubbing at her face with the back of her narrow wrist. "Can you see people?"

"Wandering around a little, in the distance, yeah," you affirm, squinting and making a note to polish your glasses sometime soon. "Towards the end of the street... they're a little hard to make out."

"They're not really there," Terezi pronounces. "They're sort of... shadows of ideas. Have you ever thought something, over and over, until it wore a rut in your mind? Until you couldn't not think it? A little narrative that never stops, until it takes on its own life."

"Yeah, I guess," you mumble. _ I am the hero. I'm going to rescue Dirk. _Yeah, you've got your little mantras. You don't want to question yourself too hard, though. It feels like falling. "So... these people are actually Dirk's ideas?"

"Yes and no," Terezi hedges. "I guess that's close enough, though. We'll go with that."

"Jolly good, then," you say, beaming. "Anything else I should know before charging ahead?"

"They get bigger, the closer they are to the center of the city," the Seer tells you.

"So we head to the middle, then," you tell her. "This might be easy."

"Never assume," Terezi tells you, clucking her tongue, and you don't argue.

* * *

_in the middle of the city there is a statue, gilted with platinum and chrome, a prince; posed with his hands outstretched, a ring of rubies about his neck, and it looks just like him, your breath catches in your throat._

_the wind tugs at your hair, you think perhaps you heard a story like this once -_

_oh, he looks so lonely._

_three ghostly people stand at the foot of the statue, each crowned with flowers._

_you think you know how this goes._

_"We don't have any blood," Terezi hisses to you._

_"What?"_

_"To feed the ghouls!"_

"_This isn't the underworld," you tell her. "And they don't look like ghouls, to me."_

_as a matter of fact, they look like -_

* * *

You pull the cowl back from the hood of the first ghost and it's _Jane, _what the hell is she doing here?

The wraith smiles a little at you, and holds your hand in hers; and it's like the heat left in a coat, right after someone's taken it off, it's a flicker of vanishing warmth around your fingers. She clears her throat.

"_How happy some oe'r other some may be. Through Prospit I am thought as fair as he; but what of that? You think not so; you will not know what all but you do know. And as you err, doting on his eyne, so I, admiring of your qualities_," she says, the words tumbling out of her mouth like stones falling, her blue eyes red around the edges.

You are at a loss.

"Jumping_ jehosephat_!" you blurt out, like a prize dummy. "Jane! How did you get here? Are you all right?"

"It's not _her,_ English, pay _attention,_" Terezi mutters, and you get the feeling she wants to kick you in the shins. "Never mind all that, ask the ghost what she has to say."

You falter a little. Your eyes are stinging. "J-jane?" you stumble. "Jane, are you... ?"

She pauses, bows her head a little. "_Once upon a time_," she says, wearily.

* * *

_once upon a time,_

_there was a happy prince, who lived a life of ease and luxury and never lacked for anything._

_he lived with another prince and two princesses in a garden of roses, in a castle surrounded by the highest of walls, and they called him the happy prince because he died a youth, never knowing the touch of sorrow or the pangs of hunger or the pain of want, and never witnessing the suffering of others._

(The images stretch out around you, like a blurry stain on a cloud of mist.)  
_  
when death came for him, his body was made into a statue and he was placed here, at the heart of his kingdom, so that his people might look on him and feel hope._

_but the happy prince wept on his pedestal!_

_"I never knew they suffered, so," he sighed, observing every human ill and every human evil. "I did nothing for them! I did nothing."_

_and most of all, the prince feared for his friends. on his dais in a prison of lead and silver, he wished for them to sleep forever in their garden. although he had already died, he wished to keep them safe until the end of time, and deliver them into paradise._

* * *

"_Into a kingdom without sorrow_," the wraith of Jane whispers, running her thumb over your knuckles; the images hovering in the air melt, disperse, vanish, and you shiver. For a minute you don't know what to think; and then you see that the sun has shifted in the sky, a red and firey sunset.

When you look back, Jane has disappeared.

"... Terezi," you say, alarmed.

"I don't know. I don't think time actually passed in the real world, but I can't tell," she mutters. "Keep going. Do your puzzle solving shit."

You can guess who the next two hovering ghosts are.

* * *

_war is what we knew and war is all we knew_,Roxy slurs out, both hands gripping your wrists as if to stay upright. She is practically see-through; the skies are black with little smeared things that look like gulls, or crows, circling and crying out in cacophonous din. They land on the buildings around you, thousands of them, all staring at the statue of Dirk, descending like nightfall.

_we were born to it, born to the fight, it's hard to explain to a peacetime baby what war means but i guess you know a little i mean jake your grandma died and you were so little, you had to get your chin up and keep going, and thats what we all liked about jane, wasn't it, she was just so untouched but she wasn't a fucking whiner she knew how important it is to keep your head above water. _  
_  
the birds are here because there's a war going on,_Roxy says, nodding over your shoulder, and you turn to the sea and look; drones, like wraiths, in a solid line across the sky, like hell descending, and you gasp at the sheer impossibility of their numbers. It's too big to understand, too big for you to wrap your head around.

_fucking had to do something, didn't he? _she calls to the birds.

And the statue says: _Brothers mine_, and your heart nearly stops, because he's there, he's in the statue -

And the birds move in one dreadful crowing unison, and they land on Dirk and they peck at his skin and fly away carrying flecks of silver, and you thrash around in Roxy's grip, crying out, because Dirk doesn't howl, he doesn't cry, but beneath the screaming of the birds and the beat of a thousand pairs of wings you hear a quiet sob -

- two massive gulls alight on his shoulders, and one by one pluck out his orange tourmaline eyes, bearing them away like shameless thieves, and you swear you hear him whimper -

_so he did what he had to do i mean we all do what we have to do in the end jakey there's no getting around it the world is a fucked-up place and it takes its pound of flesh, and there's things you can change about it but there's things that stay the same._

Gently Roxy turns you to look at the pier, her hand on your chin.

_we make do, _she says, and you watch, and you see that the birds carry their scraps of Dirk to the water and dive to crash like falling rockets against the surface of the ocean, and when they impact, they are transformed. Great men of metal spring up, floating above the waves, churning the sea into a black froth, and they fly like madmen with swords and guns and terrible clatter against the drones.

For every enemy to approach the fence around the city another bird flies out to meet it; you watch transfixed in love and horror, Roxy doesn't let you look away and you can't bear to close your eyes, every little piece of your prince thrown into battle like a seed cast to earth.  
_  
and it doesn't stop it never stops they just keep coming wave after wave, because we're smart and clever, we're such clever little shits, jake, but there's only two of us and we were always gonna lose this one but he never stopped rising to meet them blow for blow and inch for inch, he never bowed or buckled, even when i did, even when i chickened out a little or lost my nerve, he never did, because if he ever did we'd all be fucked._

She lets you go and you turn to look at the ruined statue; an ugly lead thing, barely resembling a man, pecked bare with empty sockets for eyes, face a ruined grimace.  
_  
i'm not too great at lying to my friends so i guess i suck at puzzles, sorry, _Roxy whispers, smiling like a death rictus. _i just needed you to know these things about dirk. i guess that's why i'm here, because he knows i'm the only one who understands those particular problems about being the last frigging man on earth and he needs to let you know about it somehow, he has all this weird shit wrong with him just like i do, and it's all wrapped up around one big important thing, the thing you came for, and i guess this is still kind of a riddle, huh._

_sorry about that._

"His robots?" you guess, struggling to think through the haze of hurt. The war crashes on behind you. Your vision is blurred.

_bingo. almost there, jakey,_Roxy tells you; and she vanishes with a wink, dissipating into nothing beneath your shaking hands.

* * *

It's almost dawn.

You are exhausted, suddenly; the battle has faded out behind you in a blur of smoke as thick as oil, a blanket of night across the morning sun. Your ears are ringing. The statue is still plucked naked, still empty-eyed.

"Take five," Terezi instructs you, wobbling a little on her feet. "That was a rough one."

And you can't summon words, so you nod at her, and try to find your bearings.

You're sort of fumbling along with this.

Jane was not properly herself, but Jane as she appeared to Dirk; an over the top sort of soap opera heroine, melodramatic and emotional, acting like she resented Dirk for some reason, like she was competing with him for your attention and love. It's not an accurate portrait, as far as you're concerned, but it wounds you a little, deep below your skin, to think that he'd ever believe Jane could hate him.

Roxy was likewise a little bit warped, a little off. It's like she was supposed to be Dirk's only companion in an endless war, urging him to dash every last fragment of himself against an imaginary enemy. You still hear the noise of battle echoing in your ears; it wasn't like that all the time for them growing up, surely it couldn't have been, but you think, in Dirk's head, it was. You think that in Dirk's head the war was never really over.

And it worries you a little that his imaginary constructs of his best friends don't seem to like him very much. You never bothered to wonder whether or not Dirk _liked _himself, but now you're pretty sure he doesn't.

A little epiphany rocks you: These are his_ fears._

Your chest hurts.

"Ready?" the Seer asks, softly, patting you gently on the back.

You turn to the last wraith and, hesitantly, pull back the hood of its robe.

You wonder what Dirk fears to hear from you.

* * *

_he's a lot more good-looking than you really are, all perfect tousled hair and healthy skin, and the lines of his face are sharp and clean and beautiful, so pretty you're almost embarrassed by it._

_there's a flock of gulls, still, sitting on the trees behind the statue. they watch him like they're waiting for something_

_your ghost looks at you, disinterested, and he looks at the statue, blind and gouged with the scars of a thousand beaks, a thousand battles waged._

_he blinks._

* * *

"What an eyesore," he says.

(you gape.)

"Dispose of it."

(and you want to punch him but you can't move, you can't shout, you can only -

beat your _wings -)_

"Stop it," the fake you says, batting you away from his face in irritation. "It served its purpose. There's no reason to keep it around."

(and you call out for Terezi to help you as the white gulls settle on Dirk and lift him up, begin to bear him away -)

"Melt it for scrap," you hear your own voice say, bored, and the dream-within-a-dream begins to fade as you see your own back, see him turn and walk away.

(and you cry out, you cry over and over again, a single swallow in the flock of gulls.)

* * *

"The fuck, you were a_ bird _just now," Terezi says, and you realize through your sobbing hyperventilation that she is gripping you at your human shoulders, and you try to breathe. "Easy. Easy. I fixed it. The statue's gone, did you crack the code, English?"

"Where did they take it," you choke out, in a blind panic, gripping her by her shirtfront, and she slaps at your hands.

"It just vanished, all right? I wasn't invited to see the visions you got pulled into, I don't know what happened to it!" she snaps, and you stare at her in helpless fury until you realize -

- on the air, you can smell smoke -

And you're scrambling to your feet, you're running upwind, you're barrelling down alleys and over bridges and careening around corners and Terezi is shouting behind you to slow down, she can't keep up, but you can't slow down, they're burning him -

- oh, saints and devils, the fucking flames -

She has to hold you back from leaping into them headfirst, has to keep you down on your knees until the fire dies down, until it starts to rain and the embers hiss, and you are stumbling out of her grip, you are rooting through the still-smoldering wood for some trace of him, there's snot running down your face and why does it always have to be _him,_ why is he always the one to write the blank check, why is he always the one who ends up getting _hurt _because the rest of you are too young and stupid to stay out of trouble -

- you are so sorry, you are so sorry for every time you made fun of him, you're sorry for every time you teased him for insisting you had to get _stronger, _you're so fucking sorry, you are sorry his head is a battlefield he can't escape, and you are especially sorry that he ever had any reason to fear you would discard him like garbage.

You are rooting through ash when you find it: the size of your fist, a lump of metal that would not melt.

It's his heart.

Terezi's words barely reach you at all.

"Is this it, Jake? Is that what we came for?" she's saying. You try, miserably, to pull yourself together, and nod; she lays a hand on your shoulder.

**"No place like home, Harley,"**you hear her say.

You keep your eyes screwed shut, clutching the still-warm heart to your chest as the world disintegrates around you, Atlantis sinking raft by raft, island by island, below the waves.

* * *

_Rose refuses to look you in the face; you realize you've wounded her pride, but you don't really give half a damn about it._

_You return the metal organ to the sleeping Prince of Heart and you wait, holding your breath._

_He doesn't stir;_

_He only smiles, once, in his perpetual dream._

* * *

"You weren't unconscious for very long, this time," Jane tells you at his bedside. "Just a few hours. I think Dave might have helped with that, a little. I'm not sure. And Rose will get over it, so don't worry about that. You're doing great."

"... I'm not worried," you say, sullen and churlish and emotionally empty. You feel bad, that you're so rude; you even feel a little bad that you pissed off Rose, but you are just worn too thin to care. Worn to the bone. Worn into nothing but a live wire, an electrical cord stipped of its casing.

Jane smiles at you, timidly. "What was this piece? Did you figure it out, Jake?"

You struggle to put your knowledge, composed of feelings and images and laced with a terrible, wrenching pain, into words.

"Something he put in Brobot," you say. "It wasn't where Brobot died, it was where he made Brobot. His old home, on the water, back on Earth. It felt like," you stumble, "like it was the part of him that needed to be strong. The part of him that needed to be invincible. The part that was aggressive."

Jane's eyes, when you meet them, are just as red as yours.

"Dirk wanted to keep us safe," she says, quietly. "He felt like he had to."

... She's right, of course.

"Yeah," you croak back. "I reckon it was that."

* * *

All Jade can show you is a palm full of dust; and even the dust is vanishing. She's still straining, still trying her best.

"Was that the last one?" she asks you, her ears twitching back, her small face pinched with hope. She can tell by the look on your face: it wasn't. It wasn't, or he'd be better, by now. He'd be awake.

"I can do this," you tell her, as her expression melts from hopeful to crestfallen. Your voice trembles and shakes, as unsteady as a rocking boat. "I'm the hero."

_You are the hero._  
_  
You can rescue Dirk._

And a tiny part of you mutters,_ who are you fucking kidding. _But you cannot allow yourself to think it; if you doubt yourself, you will lose. You can't lose.

You can't lose Dirk.

* * *

_you made a bargain with a witch, and_

_you tried your best, but_

_in the end:_

_it_

_wasn't_

enough.

* * *

a/n: based on oscar wilde's "the happy prince".


	4. Chapter 4

"How does it _work_?" Roxy asks the Seer of Mind, genuinely baffled, while you inhale food you can barely taste. Auras of pink and teal flicker around their bodies. You aren't trying to call on the spell. It's just starting to bleed over.

And your mouth is full and you remember that both Terezi and Roxy are technically ladies so you probably ought to chew and swallow first, and that gives you a moment to reflect.

* * *

_how it works is..._

_how to explain it?_

_bugger._

_well it's kind of like this:_

_rose gave you the spell, and so, when your mind goes... wherever Dirk is,_

_the witchery helps you make a map to Dirk._

_and that's what the fantasy worlds are, that's what the visions are. that's the origin of wonderland: really fucking strange maps that exist on top of the astral landscape they are intended to represent. maps that change the world around them. maps that distort reality to make things easier for you to find, and the stories are the key to the maps. _

_you need them because, given a universe or three, how do you find a thimble? _

_and although they are damned inconvenient, they are the only ones you could possibly have, because you are the only one who can do this. _

_this toil-trouble of picking up pieces, and mending people._

_(rose told you: the map comes from you._

_the magic, she said in that dry spooky way of hers, is only helping.)_

* * *

"How it works is, Mister English goes shithive," Terezi says, cutting off your response to Roxy with a very toothy grin. She is stripping meat from a plate full of ribs. You are a little astonished by how much food she can pack away. "And then I help his small human brain shake the crazy off. It's a form of deliberate insanity. We're winging it."

"Uh. Gotcha. I think," Roxy says, glancing at you and pursing her lips. "Is he - are you okay, though, Jakey boy? You feeling all right?"

"Fit as a bug in a fiddle, Rox," you say. You muster up a shadow of your usual grin and send your dear lady friend double-pistols-and-a-wink with your pointer fingers, leaving your actual guns in their holsters. You are so tired; you aren't sure of your aim, and you were raised not to take chances with gun safety.

Roxy smiles uneasily back, returns wonk for wink. "Kay then. If you say so."

She believes you at your word, and a pang of guilt hits your guts. (Maybe you're just eating too quickly. You slow down a little.)

You don't really care to mention that you can see halos around their heads, now, even while you're waking. You feel it would be indiscreet, and besides, what if they stopped you from doing this? What if they didn't let you, anymore?

What if Rose took her spell back?

No, you'd rather not spill the beans on your brain damage. They can find out later.

After you have saved Dirk.

* * *

_this time,_

_after you shake off the nausea and the vertigo, after you check yourself (you're dressed in some sort of weird shitty toga this time, and instead of your guns you're stuck with a - a lute? not the strings you're used to, at any rate)_

_- you wish you had a ball of string, instead._

* * *

"... Where the hell is this?" you ask. You seem to be in a tunnel underground, lit with torches that release no scent and don't appear to burn down the tapers at all. When you breathe, the air is cool and heady with the scents of dirt, dust, decay. This place is dark, and ghoulish, and practically _reeks_ of adventure. This, you think, is more like it.

Terezi is swathed in a really hilarious toga ensemble. She's got these precious little shoes with wings on them and she looks _pissed_ about it. You bite the inside of your cheek very hard.

"I don't - would you kindly stop crawling up my nook, English," she says, in what is possibly the most rude turn of phrase you have ever heard fall from her lips, and sticks her tongue out at you in all its distressingly long glory. "It's a little familiar, but I'm not sure where, exactly."

You beam. "I saw a Sci-Fi original movie a lot like this, once," you tell her.

"If your Sci-Fi channel aired anything like the Alternian SyFy channel's movies, I think we can both agree that you should be ashamed to admit to that," she says, attempting to elbow you in the ribs. You sidestep gracefully; she just clocks you a soft one in the gut.

"Togas and a lute," you say. "We're lost in Greco-Roman mythology or I'm a monkey's uncle."

Terezi's sightless eyes blink at you. "... I don't think that that is how evolution works, Jake," she says, as though she is trying to gently break the news to a small child that Santa isn't real.

"It's - Never mind."

"Okay. So. Any luminous ideas, addlepan?"

"Not so far. Pretty sure you're Mercury, though," you tell her. "We're going to have to look for _clues._"

"Joyous," Terezi snarks.

* * *

_the pathways twist and turn; the only light is the light of the torches. you try to take one to carry with you, but they won't come down from their brackets._

_you are heading further and further down in a massive spiral._

_as you sink deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth, you begin to pick up on a sound that resembles, at first, the whispering of the wind through dry leaves. it becomes a noise like the murmurings of an orchestra; and finally, as you pass an ominous white archway, you can hear it for what it is:_

_countless thousands of voices screaming._

_ahead of you the walls and floor of the tunnel are pristine white marble, lined with grotesque reliefs that cast flickering shadows through the gloom. as one, you and your partner hesitate._

_terezi has gone silent and grim._

_"you can play that stringy thing, right?" she asks you uneasily._

_"probably," you whisper back. you aren't sure why both of you are whispering._

_"good. because i think you'll need to." she pauses, and clenches her fists. you think she's probably wishing she had her cane on hand. "i can't carry a tune in a bucket, English. i think i'll only be able to escort you out." another pause. "if this place lets us."_

_"you feel it too, then," you murmur. cold sweat dries on your forehead and lower back. the flimsy toga is too damn cold in this drafty serpentine tunnel to - "the underworld."_

_"ah. yes. we travel under the shadow of the valley of death, to quote Dane Cook," terezi murmurs back._

_"are you scared?" you quip. you're teasing her because you don't know what else to think or feel in this situation and if you contemplate it for too long you will probably shit yourself._

_she grins wickedly and slaps you on the back with her open palm. "you are not the only panfevered dolt in our parties with a thirst for adventure, english! i'll be the scourge sister and you be the cannon fodder, all right?"_

_"counsel, i object," you say, grinning back._

_she cackles._

_and then you walk, side-by-side, into the coatroom of someplace a lot like Hell; the screaming becomes a din, and the tunnel behind you collapses completely, barring your exit._

_you try not to panic._

* * *

She slaps you on the back and gestures furiously to the lute once one of her ears starts to bleed, teal and terrible and dripping down her slender neck. You can't hear what she's saying over the thunder of screams, and you are squinting too hard in an involuntary attempt to block out some of the overwhelming sensory stimulation to read her lips, but you get it; she thinks you should play, and so you take it out of its weird slingy carrying thing, and you experimentally strum it.

- and the deafening roar is silenced, as the strings reverberate a clear, crystalline noise, and the sudden lack of noise is like aural whiplash, you both wince, and you stare, in mild horror, at the slightly brighter path before you.

The vibrating strings begin to still, and, like a returning tide, the howls start to pour back over you like rushing water -

Terezi slaps you, urgently, and you fumble the strings again, and they are silenced.

"Keep playing, you fuckwit," she hisses, still clutching her bleeding ear.

"I don't know how to use a fucking lute, the strings are all different," you hiss back. "It's -"

"Then just _keep fucking around_ until you figure it out, shit for brains," she says, and spits contemptuously on the ground in front of your shitty leather gladiator sandals, and you have never been more grateful that she's an impudent fearless daredevil than you are now, because it actually calms you down a little. You do as she says, and keep fucking around.

There are no frets and there is no "baby's first lute" tape stuck on to guide the new and the hapless, but once you work out the fingering you nick little notches in the lute's neck where you ought to press the strings to the bridge, and you aimlessly start to play a few bits of light pieces you half-remember from _Casablanca_ and _The Cotton Club _at about a third their official speed.

The silenced voices, though, are getting to you; and the tunnel gets brighter and brighter the deeper you go, and you think: you only remember one story about a chumpass strolling into Tartarus with a lute, and it doesn't end well.

* * *

_'what's the story,' terezi asks you, in a hushed voice, as you pass a curve and enter a stretch with terrible high ceilings and delicate marble columns lining the walls. _

_'orpheus and eurydice,' you say, continuing to strum. it's actually a very good instrument; you don't know lutes, but you know quality._

_'no, i mean, tell me the story,' she says. if you can talk and play at the same time._

_'eurydice dies on their wedding day, and orpheus is the son of a muse, so he charms his way into the underworld with a lute to try to get his wife back,' you say. 'and they tell him okay, but you can't look behind you as you lead her up and out, and he says you got yourself a deal, your majesties. but he loses his faith in their promise, and just as they're about to get to the mortal world again this boob of a guy frigging looks, and she has to stay in the underworld forever. so he cries in the forest until some partying babes get real tired of his shit, and they rip him to shreds.'_

_'in the troll version,' terezi says, 'he plucks out his eyes at the end.'_

_'that's a different story in the human books. this guy accidentally marries his mother. it's a little bit preposterously whack.' you saw a version that was meant to resemble the greek play as closely as possible, and you loved it._

_'well, we don't have to worry about you losing your faith,' she says, and you flush a bit. 'so what are we expecting?'_

_your heart feels heavy in your chest, dragging your shoulders down and making your body weary. you aren't sure if it's the pull towards Dirk, or if you're just having some sort of emotional cockup._

_'i'm expecting we have to bargain with Death.'_

_terezi smiles at you. 'no saline excretions, friend. we run that circus all the time,' she says, in a way you are sure she means to be encouraging. you are not reassured._

_the tunnel keeps collapsing behind you as soon as you enter a new section; you don't know what will happen if Death doesn't let you back out again. _

_and your fingers are starting to hurt._

* * *

when you finally get to the river there is a man in a hood, towering above you, standing in the only boat. the water is blacker than pitch and you know that if you touch it, you will forget why you are here.

he holds out his hand.

"we don't have any money," you realize aloud, your hands faltering on the string for a moment, and the shades whisper, briefly, like the chattering of a thousand cicadas. "terezi, we don't have any money."

terezi bites her lower lip.

the faceless charon taps his foot, palm outstretched.

"yes we do," she mutters, and reaches into her tunic and pulls out -

"not your Caegar," you say, aghast.

"shush," she tells you, quietly.

she looks charon right in the cowl.

"we aren't dead," she says, firmly. "i'm only pawning it to you. you will give it back when we leave."

the creature seems vaguely unimpressed, which is a remarkable feat for a thing without a face. your legislacerator raises an eyebrow, and the corner of her mouth twitches.

"why should you abide by my terms? because i have a sister on the inside, and she won't care that i sent her," terezi says, baring her teeth and widening her eyes in a rictus of a smile that sends a shiver down your spine and through the body of the lute. "i'm sure you've run into serket. trust me, you don't want us working together to break out. you play by my rules, sir, or i will topple the underworld."

charon pauses.

charon nods.

"i'm so glad we understand each other," terezi purrs, and gently places the coin in his hand.

you are pretty sure you popped a blister on your index finger; your hands are shaking, you're out of practice. you keep playing.

(you are warmly, briefly glad that pyrope is on your side.)

* * *

_as you cross the water you find your muscles suddenly know how to play the lute, a lot better, and terezi's face twitches at you first in mild surprise and then with suspicion. your fingertips are oozing ichor and a little bit of blood, but you don't dare stop; playing anything you can think of, playing things desperate and strange, playing strains of desperation and agony. as you pass statues in alcoves, you think you see water rolling from their eyes._

_you keep walking; you're almost being dragged forwards, your urgent need to see him is so strong and clamorous. there is a short hall, and at the end of the hall is a door._

_she opens it for you._

_and on the other side is a throne room._

_and you were wrong, with your half-formed notions about Eurydice._

_there are two thrones; the largest is a towering, monstrous, frightening thing of skulls and silent holes in stone, and on it sits something your vision refuses to allow you to focus upon. in your peripheral, you see flickering images of a skeleton in aviators._

_the second throne is smaller; it is at the joining-place of a stalactite and a stalagmite, and it is made entirely of ice. the figure seated upon it is rigidly still, probably because the ice is impaling and swallowing him, the stalactite plunging down into the back of his neck. he is unmoving, glassy, unblinking._

_in this story, Dirk is Proserpine._

* * *

"Dirk," you rasp out. Your lungs burn.

- his _eyes move._ Jesus _Christmasfucker._

Your hands keep moving, as though of their own accord; they hurt horribly, but it sounds incredible.

"_Dirk," _you sob.

He blinks.

You don't mind that he's dead. He's _here._

* * *

_and like knives cutting shapes in the air the thing on the larger throne says:_

_**IF YOU CAN MOVE HIM TO TEARS, I'LL ALLOW IT.**_

_you don't hear it, not really; it's more like it sears yourself into your understanding, with metal so cold it burns you. you shudder._

_"can you and I play a board game while we wait?" terezi calls out. like you, she cannot quite face Death, but she is grinning. _

_**SHIT YES.**_

_she places a hand on your shoulder. "do your thing, wondergrub." she seems regretful. "i have some answers to win."_

_"... hurts," you whisper as the music spills out from under your bleeding hands._

_"i know. do it anyway."_

_and so,_

_you do._

* * *

Time eventually winds itself to a slow, soft halt, and ceases to have any bearing on your present reality.

"I wish you didn't look so sad," you say, sitting crosslegged on the floor, staring up at him.

At first it was awkward; at first you rambled with stories and shitty anecdotes and mindless begging. Your voice is hoarse, now. You have lost your brain-to-mouth filter.

Blood drips down your left arm; your right hand is beginning to ache, as well. You don't focus on that. You stare up at the ice that is swallowing your best friend (your best beloved friend) and you have no jokes left.

"I miss talking to you about movies. And robots. And everything, really. Before things went fucking apeshit and we blew up the universe. It was nice. Was it nice for you? Hope so.

(A vibrato on a high E.)

"The game screwed up a lot of things, didn't it? We didn't really have a choice, at any point. It was just something we had to win, no matter what. And I think that's what got you and I into this stupid mess. Maybe. Having to win, no matter what. It sent you here, and it brought me after you. Idiot.

(Arpeggios down, cascading.)

"We're all so fucking tired. You most of all, probably. Old bean.

(Arpeggios up.)

"You were too good to us, you terrible, _wonderful_ shithead. You were too fucking good -"

* * *

_His lips move._

_"Jake, I don't think I was ever good," he whispers, and it rolls over you like a touch, "until you thought so."_

_His eyes are glistening._

* * *

"You were," you plead, you insist. "Christ, Dirk, you _were_, it wasn't your _fault_, you were _fucking fantastic._ Brilliant. Capital. Six ways to Sunday, you were a goddamn hero."

(With every complimentary word you throw at him, the glisten in his eyes gets wobblier, threatens to fall further.)

You don't realize your face is smiling at him, a real smile, not your tired facsimile; you only know that your face hurts from doing it so hard.

"You threw it all on the line for us like a total idiot over and over again, you blew me out of the water, you made it classy and you made it look _easy_, you made me believe we could win the damn thing - Dirk, you weren't just _good_, you were the _best, _I fucking loved you for it."

(He breathes.)

* * *

_and when it falls, shining, you hold out both hands to catch it: it is a topaz teardrop, the color of his eyes._

_in the sudden silence, you hear terezi say: "checkmate."_

_the throne where dirk sat is empty; the lute lies shattered on the floor, drenched in your blood._

_you stare at it stupidly._

_"... fuck," you say, wobbling to your feet, dizzy, as the dead begin to rise whispering from the floor, their voices rising in rage._

_"Jake, RUN," terezi bellows._

_you try._

_she catches up, grabs you by the wrist helps you to the boat and whispers something to the ferryman as the noise begins to rise and swell, a symphony of mourning wails; he takes you upstream, not across, and you are curled in a ball in th bottom of the boat, you are holding your hands over your ears and you are sobbing, airless and hurting, and the voices are crushing your skull they are so fucking loud -_

_**"faster," **__terezi howls, her hands around the ferryman's neck, and when you see daylight -_

_**get us out, for the love of the mother grub, get us out.**_

* * *

When you wake up, your hand is still a mess, and Terezi's ear is still bleeding, slow and sluggish. She's holding her Caegar in her palm; the side with the scratch is now crossed with two gouges, forming an X.

You stare at her and she grips your wrist, in mutual weariness.

"A dream bubble," she says, flatly.

"The one that visited the bubble. The one that didn't mind dying," you say back. You're simply confirming each others' mutual suspicions. Revelations are bitter in the back of your throat.

* * *

He doesn't wake up this time, either.


	5. Chapter 5

_you made a bargain_

* * *

this time:

a puzzle world of marble white walls and cold mazes and perfect rectangles stretching upwards unscalable. you can't really find your ass from your elbows until terezi remembers that if you want to get out of a maze you just have to follow one wall to the end. _press your hand against one wall and shut your eyes and go. _so she takes point and you follow her, for hours and mindless hours.

there is no ceiling; there is only a distant, inky blackness that swims softly at the limits of your vision.

this maze doesn't have an exit, though. it has a center.

and you flick the safety off on your pistols because you are expecting a minotaur; but when you get to the heart of the maze, there is no monster.

there is a block of milky white stone about six feet by four by four; and a chisel plunged into it, like a sword in the side of a martyr.

you are both flummoxed.

* * *

_you are the hero_

_you can rescue Dirk_

* * *

"Why are the Princes always so _twisted_," Terezi huffs. You can tell she's annoyed. There's a dull throbbing halo of annoyance all about her flyaway hair, seeping into the set of her spine, and you blink a little to clear your vision of the smearing. "Honestly."

And you don't know what to make of that statement, so you bite the inside of your cheek and brood.

"... He isn't," you say, finally, because the silence was in its third trimester of pregnancy and things were getting a little awkward.

Terezi is staring at you, with her sightless peepers. It's as unnerving as ever. You try to keep your eyes on the block of marble instead, try to focus on untangling the new question. What are the stories of sculptors?

"Really," the Seer says. Her affect is flat, nasal. "So the labyrinth was just for shits and giggles."

"He's complicated," you argue, biting down on your instinctive anger. You are so tired.

She pauses, in that ominous way she does when she's deciding not to pull her punches.

"If you think you weren't manipulated into this," Terezi says, arms akimbo, "then you're really very stupid, Page."

The sentence, along with all of its implications and assumptions, malingers in the air. At least she can't see you flinch.

You were starting to think that Terezi, at least, thought a little bit better of you.

And you are vomitously sick of everything, of Terezi and of SBURB and of these milksops who are supposed to be your allies and instead look at you like you were dropped on your head as a baby. You are sick of blindly ignoring the opinions of the faithless and the sensible because Christ, you _know_ what they must think of _you_.

Heavens to Betsy, but you are tired. You are tired of everyone behaving like you made this choice blindly, that you didn't _know_ what you were in for, because they ask themselves who in their right mind would _choose_ it? The insult stings you, drags you down, belittles you.

You didn't get involved in, in _this_, as part of the culmination of some ridiculous xanatos gambit, you got _involved_ when you looked at him and thought to yourself that, maybe, here was a person you could fall in love with.

"... Just because I'm an _idiot_ doesn't mean I'm _stupid,"_ you croak out.

(There's no 'maybe' about it, not anymore. God help you.)

Your shoulders shake; she lays a hand on your forearm, chin tilted up in a vague angle towards your face.

"I'm sorry," she says. You see the muscles of her throat work as she swallows.

"Good."

"That was mean."

"Yes." (You sound like a dying frog.)

"Are you -"

"_Pygmalion_," you say, suddenly, because it occurs to you, like a bolt from the blue, and because you want to change the subject before you start to scream bloody murder. "Pygmalion and Galatea. Like, like in _My Fair Lady._" You shove your glasses up the bridge of your nose and take a step out of the Seer's grip, towards the marble quadrilateral.

"Aha," Terezi says, softly, her lips drawing into a tight black line.

She scowls at the hilt of the chisel.

You both come to the simultaneous understanding that you, alone, are meant to carve with it, and she snorts.

"Believe me, Jake, the symbolism is so thick I might choke on it."

"I'm not biting off more than I can chew, Pyrope," you say softly in return; she understands.

* * *

_there's surely a little bit of excalibur in the air, as well, because the moment you lay your hand on the chisel you have the crackling vision of a blade, terrible and silver, glittering like a guillotine, and the hairs on the back of your neck raise._

_your hand moves of its own volition; your whole right arm has gone an eerie shade of white, like the lady of the lake. the marble cracks and crumbles as though you were demolishing a cake or other soft pastry, falling in thunderous clatter at your feet. you don't need an awl; beneath your hand the rock gives way easily._

_you expect this process to reveal a statue of your best (beloved) friend. _

_you expect the blade to whittle away layers of rock until the shape of a man forms._

_instead it's the blade itself that grows longer, more terribly sharp; it gouges and destroys and you can't stop it, it moves so fast and it gleams so wickedly, you can barely breathe. you are dripping sweat and panting, harshly, to oxygenate your burning blood; your arm is a limb of fire, of hurt._

_and as you carve open the marble you see glimpses of thousands of written words, buried like fossils; fragments of them whizzing past your ears, shattering at your feet, and most of them go by too quickly to catch except in slivers: shatter, heart, batter, break._

_there are two complete sentences, however, which you catch in their entirety:_

_MAN CANNOT REMAKE HIMSELF WITHOUT SUFFERING, FOR HE IS BOTH THE MARBLE AND THE SCULPTOR._

_and,_

_A SWORD IS ONLY A SWORD WHEN IT KILLS._

* * *

Eventually there is no marble left, only a pile of debris.

The chisel isn't a chisel anymore; it looks like a prop from a video game, it's as long as you are tall, like a glaive or a scimitar. Your arm hurts. You can't breathe enough.

"Jake?" Terezi asks, hesitantly. She doesn't step inside the radius of rubble, which is probably wise of her. Your gut tells you that this is a place that you (and only you) are allowed.

Catching your wind again, you blink the sweat out of your eyes and stare at the blade.

It shines like glass; you can see your reflection in its gleaming surface, and something, something flickering beneath it, something with white hair and orange eyes -

You can't release your grip on the hilt, but, with your left hand, you carefully touch it with your fingertips -

* * *

_and the blade shatters _

_like glass, _

_leaving you only the hilt in your hand._

_the ensuing silence is like a gasp for air._

_your eyes are watering._

_you find you can pry your fingers off of it; it, too, has been transformed into something ornate and heavy._

_carved like a curving dragon around the hilt, another inscription in relief, that has cut itself into your palm and which you read in your raw wounds:_

_**pain is the feeling of imperfection leaving the body.**_

_you are going to vomit -_

* * *

"Easy, Jake," Terezi says, looping an arm around your waist, letting you lean on her shoulders. You breathe, gulping. "What is it?"

You can't think, you are - you can taste smoke in the back of your throat, and when you look up, to the distant sky, you see a bolt of crimson flicker. You know.

"The corpse," you say. "The, the body he used to have, we're in a crypt, Terezi, I -" You squint against the tears; you don't have the energy to cry. Every part of your own body hurts.

You admired his strength, you envied him, you didn't know that necessity made it fanatic, you didn't fucking _know_ what it cost to do what Dirk did, alone on the water -

It should have been a love story, is all you can think, helplessly, to yourself. _It was supposed to be a love story -_

Your brows arch together like a collapsing building. The marrow of your bones is shredded aluminim foil; your blood is battery acid. Pain is a constant.

"Beam us up, Scotty," you murmur, not really caring if your partner gets the reference.

_**Lalonde, Harley,**_ Terezi calls out.

(And the labyrinth crumbles to nothing. And as the world becomes a melting kaleidoscope of monochromes, you think, _ashes to ashes -)_

* * *

It's hard to describe what the spell does for you, as far as altering your perception goes; it's difficult to pin down the intentional from the worsening side-effects.

It augments your abilities. You suppose, to put it concisely, that it lends _vision_ to what you could already sense.

People are a lot like mosaics; you couldn't see it before, but you could feel it, like imagining a face by touching it. You could feel the way they were all a loose and lovely collection of pieces, constellations of soul, constantly shifting and expanding and shrinking like galaxies; the empty space between fractions of the self a blank slate, room to _grow_.

Roxy, like an inkstain curling through water or like smoke in space; Jane more orderly, curling shapes all neat and geometric like garden rows, blooming outwards; Jade like a delightful coil of triangles, golden ratios stacked infinitely smaller and spiking out in stars and points and pricked up wolf ears. It's _normal_ for people to be composed of self and empty space. Some degree of emptiness is necessary, you think, or at the very least healthy.

Dirk is different.

The pieces you salvage are getting smaller and smaller, and when you look at Dirk, there is something fundamental missing. He is like a bridge without a keystone.

_Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,_ to quote notorious beat poet David "Sick Raps" Hume.

Dirk has no center, and he is collapsing no matter how desperately Jane tries to extend her geometries and be the keystone.

No matter how frantically you try to plug up the holes in the sieve, his life leaks out of him like water, a solar system with no sun and no gravity to bind him together.

* * *

_you made a bargain with a witch, and_

* * *

She is a smear of purple and black coils and you can barely make out her face but you know in your guts that she is frowning, there's a _mood_ or perhaps a color to the air when she frowns, and when she speaks you can see the fabric of space shift like a violin string, like a reverberation through a pond or across the twitching skin of a horse, and you try to act normal but it's a little difficult to focus proper, when everyone is a blur and gouts of fire - where is your body? The sick bay or the surface of the sun? Every living thing around you varying degrees of friendly, heartsick, resigned, and you are a bonfire, you are burning up.

"Jake, we can't keep this up forever," the orchid says and you read the meaning in the blooming of words from a blood-drenched hyacinth, and you remember that story, you remember, Apollo and Hyacinthus, and wasn't that also a love story? You shut your eyes but the terrifying wheel of color and crackling fire do not vanish; there is no reprieve, and you wobble to your feet groaning.

"_I can rescue Dirk_," you cough out. Smoke rises from your eyes and skin, your lungs are bellows. You can't, you can't quite -

"At least eat something," someone whispers and you can't be sure which blazing god before you said it but there are hands on your arms and you are struggling forward against a grip that finally relents, and you are walking like lead-foot corpse, you have a fishhoolk through your heart and it reels you inexorably forwards, forwards to a bier, upon which lies a dull and dreadful thing crumbling apart before your eyes, and in your hand you are carrying a wound, you carry the memory of agony, and you don't -

- you don't _want_ to give that back to him, you want to withhold, but -

You cannot bear to see him fall further and further apart, and after all it belongs to him, so you don't have a choice, do you? Not as such.

Like trying not to shatter an eggshell you let the hateful words fall from your skin gently as you can, but the body still thrashes, once, the mouth falling open in a tiny soundless cry of pain. The crumbling, at least, slows down.

Your heart leaps in your chest. You are gripping a hand as if you could call the soul back to it, just by holding hard enough, and someone is softly touching your shoulders but what is the _point_ of comfort if he isn't the one to administer it.

"Don't die," you say, choking on the smoke, your mind in tatters. "_Please."_

(You think you hear someone crying.)

(You don't know if it's you.)

* * *

_you are the hero_

_you can rescue dirk_

_you are the hero you can rescue dirk you are the hero you can_

* * *

It's a relief to go under again, it's a relief to get out of the real and back into the unreal, because in the real world Dirk is -

Nothing makes sense, except the stories.

This time it's a lonely village by the sea, white cliffs in the distance, sea air welcoming you, the odd light of a cloudless afternoon shimmering in the pale blue sky. You don't have your pistols; you have a heavy arquebus strapped across your back, like a small cannon.

Terezi is wearing a medieval outfit of leather leggings and a really odd, puffy teal shirt beneath a leather vest; she kept her shades. You are wearing a full shirt of chain maille, heavy and hot in the sunlight; your boots are heavy as well. It takes a while for you to adjust to it.

"I understand," she says, suddenly, apropos of nothing. You are walking down a dirt path towards a long row of mountain spines, following the pull. You raise an eyebrow at her and cough.

"Understand what?"

"I had a friend, once," she says, her little hands clenched into fists as she trudges beside you. "Someone I had to execute. It was a nasty business."

"Blimey," you say. "Are you sure you understand? You're a smart cookie, but you know I'm not one for giving up on people."

Terezi makes a weird, gulping laugh noise. You almost want to ask if she's all right; it sounds horrible.

When she has recovered, she folds her arms over her chest and kicks a stone off the dirt path, pausing to listen to it skitter away. "Jake English, you are a beast with your jaws latched onto an ankle," she says. Her voice is pitying, stressed, like she's fighting to control her temper. "And it doesn't matter how hard the other foot kicks at you, or how many times you're told to drop it. He could take a bat to your face, and it wouldn't matter one bit. You_ keep your teeth clenched!"_

"Sounds about right, Miz Pyrope," you say, because it is all you can say, and you grin at her because otherwise your face would do something else, something wretched. There is a species of jungle ant which performs a similar function - you can behead them and they'll keep their mandibles locked - so you suppose you're flattered she described a creature with a sense of loyalty.

"There is a dragon up ahead," she says a little while later. "Just so you know."

"Roger that," you tell her, amiable in your weariness. You can't summon the energy to be testy with her, or to argue with her judgements. They hit close enough to home that there's not much to argue. You guess that that's what a Seer of Mind does, whittles you down and hunts out the core, knows you uncanny accurate. (_You made a bargain with a witch.)_

And as you round the bend, you see a pale figure chained to a rock beside a vast and eerily placid lake.

You know this story.

* * *

_flaxen haired and pale as winter mornings, a bleached-out version of him, on his head a thin gold circlet and around his waist, gathering the white linen robe, a pale sash. the setting is vaguely european and you are dressed like a germanic knight; putting two and two together, this is not Andromeda and Perseus. _

_it is Saint George and the Dragon._

_the serpent, its head as large as you are tall, crowned at the crest and down its back with a thousand pitiful skulls, rises out of the water. it is blind; it flicks a tongue the size of your leg out to taste the air, and turns its nose towards Dirk -_

_and the arquebus is a little different from how this story generally goes, you're sure, but you are not the kind of sap to bring a knife to a gunfight._

_the recoil nearly knocks you over, but damn, what a shot; right into the open mouth, out the back of its hideous head - _

_it screams, bestial and terrible, belching blue fire in your general direction as it thrashes. your eyebrows singe, you grimace and you ready your next shot - _

_it takes a full volley before it stops writhing and bellowing in the water, until it has colored the lake a deep and terrible crimson, until your ears ring with the noise of gunfire and the terrible calls of the dead beast. _

_its tail twitches, still; but nothing could survive what you put it through. the earth around you is scorched black, the dry grass smouldering._

_the moment you are satisfied of its demise you throw the gun to the ground, and you run to him._

* * *

"Jake?" he asks, soft orange irises luminous, wrists hanging limply in their shackles. The grass is dead beneath his feet; there are old bloodstains on the sheer face of the rock. You can't speak, only run a shaking hand down the side of his face, and nod, because, bleeding fuck, does he feel real. Skin and soft fine hairs and warmth. "It would seem the key is elsewhere," he says, blinking at you as if he's struggling to stay awake. "There's a side quest -"

You pick up a rock, and with brute force granted by the adrenaline of your desperation, you shatter the metal that keeps him bound, snarling in your impatience until it gives.

He doesn't say a word; only watches you, eyes wide; rubbing his wrists.

And you sway on your feet; but he holds you upright, and you very nearly sob, because it _smells_ like him, it isn't bloody fair.

"I wanted you to be the one to save me," he whispers in your ear, a hand on the small of your back. "Mr. Hollywood."

"How long have you been here?" you whisper back, voice low. His smile wavers briefly, and he nods at the head of the serpent.

"Look at the number of skulls on that fucker," he tells you. "How long do you _think?_"

Your stomach drops.

"No," you mumble.

"Every one of them mine," he says quietly, against your ear, and presses a small and fleeting kiss to the corner of your jaw.

You shake like a seizure; you sob, once, into his shoulder.

"... I hate you," you mumble through tears. (Your arms are around his waist; your thumbs are tracing gentle circles on his hipbones.)

"But you came for me anyway," he says back, a gentle susurrus. He looks wistful and sad, then, like a tearstained letter, the ink blurred in blotches. You think he really believes you hate him. "I'm sorry. The parts of me that long for you don't have any weapons."

"You'd let a dragon eat you, a thousand times, before you'd have the gumption to actually confess to me?" you scold him, through the tears dripping off your face. "You wanker."

And although he's in your arms, he looks utterly lost; confused, a little. He was always too cerebral and his head too big, you think, to understand a damned thing.

"Love leaves us defenseless," he says to you, wavering.

"It doesn't," you promise.

His smile, slow and meandering into existence, reminds you of the dawn.

* * *

_he leads you to the water and he unwinds the girdle from his waist; he dips it in the water, into the blood of a serpent that swallowed a thousand hearts, and it dyes the fabric a deep and brilliant crimson. it paints red up his hands and arms; he doesn't seem to be bothered by it._

_he ties it around your waist in a square knot. terezi is lingering by the water, face pointed in the direction of the carcass, lost in a memory of her own. at least it gives you some privacy._

_if only he were real, you think, you could kiss him; he holds your hands in his bloodied ones, and examines the soft shells of your fingernails like he loves them._

_"i am his trust," he murmurs, answering the question you didn't ask. "and i was always yours."_

_he starts to vanish, body resolving into mist; you can't help but cling, until the world itself is falling apart, and you start to feel yourself being ripped at the edges._

_terezi, too, lingers late; but she sings out eventually, and you both are drawn back up to the surface, like corks held under water._

* * *

He doesn't even stir; it settles back into him quietly, and it's a piece, for sure. It's an important piece.

But it wasn't the one he needs. He is still hollowed out at the pit. You sit at his bedside and you don't move.

Roxy, pink tendrils of mist curling around her body and over you, entreating, drags you away eventually. She is shoving food into your hands, saying _come on, Jakester, take ten, you look like shit. _

You still look back over your shoulder as you go; at the confusing blur of images and feelings and dissolving concepts that make up the husk of Dirk. Within you, the fire is burning out; the smoke that poured off of you is now as substantial as steam.

_you_

_you are the hero, you can rescue Dirk -_

* * *

It's a little easier when Roxy is sitting next to you; the cracks in your perception don't overwhelm you, the hallucinations settle down a little, and you can focus on the lines of exhaustion below her eyes.

"... Do you think," she asks, as you half-heartedly chew on the stale food she got out of her sylladex. You can't taste a damn thing. It's orange. You don't give a shit. "Do you think you could have picked Jane?"

The question blindsides you. You swallow. "What?"

"Instead of Dirk," she presses, gently. You realize, belatedly, that everyone on this stupid platform in the void has got you pegged. You discover you still have the energy to flush, and feel dizzy. "Sorry for prying. I was just wondering."

"... Well," you say, trying to fathom it. "Jane is a lovely gal."

"She is," Roxy agrees. "She totally would've gone for it, too. Between you and me."

"Oh! My lips are sealed. I am mister zuiperpips, fear not. It's just."

You try to think back, try to pin down when the possibility of dating Jane stopped occurring to you. Why did it happen? It wasn't because of your current quest. You would still be doing this for Dirk, even if you didn't feel the way you do; but you reckon it would hurt substantially less.

"She doesn't... know what it's like, to be lonely," you say at last. It's like pulling a scab off.

When you were far too young, you had to burn the body of your grandmother and learn to fend for yourself. You knew you missed human companionship because you'd had a taste of it, you knew what you'd lost, you cried for what had been taken away; but Dirk is the loneliest creature you've ever known, lonely without ever knowing an alternative.

It isn't, as Terezi would call it, _pity_.

It's something you share, an identical scar, a twin dent in your armor. You loved him for his damage before you ever loved him for his strength; perhaps it was low of you, perhaps it was mean, but you were a lost boy looking desperately for someone who _understood_.

And you are older now, but the gutting loneliness remains.

Roxy nods, slowly, once she's digested your words.

"Lucky girl, isn't she," she remarks, closing the gate on the discussion. She lets her feet dangle off the edge of the platform, over a starless abyss; you remember how she wouldn't stop screaming _CALLIOPE_, over and over, into a nothingness that never answered.

The Seer of Void understands loneliness.

* * *

_he worsens by the hour. the yawning gap inside him eats at the structure of his firmament; you feel it in your guts and you see it, dreadfully, with the Sight that Rose granted you._

_you are running out of time; all Jade can show you is a fistful of sand, and what are the odds, that you've missed something so big?_

_you made a bargain with a witch, but_

_in the end, _

_it wasn't enough._

* * *

You fish the remains of a poisoned apple from the throat of a dead body and unlock a chest with a heart, salvaging his pride (Snow White), you save the strings from a puppet and you recover his hunger for humanity (Pinocchio), you watch a spider spin a tapestry and you rip out his hubris (Terezi tells you it's Arachne); you keep going like an engine that can't be stopped, careening blindly forwards.

It's like you're gathering up grains of sand. Every plunge exhausts you and the surfacing demolishes you.

You stagger to his bedside, again and again and again, you return snips and slivers, you stare at the hollow within him and you feel like you're suffocating, you feel like you're dying, the clamor in your chest is as insistent as ever, and saints have mercy, but the candle burns short.

Demons dance in your vision.

The worlds grow smaller, and smaller still; they shrink until they are no longer stories, but simple ideas, scenes and colors and flickering lights in a dark that devours.

Rose refuses to send you.

You clench your teeth, and you start sending yourself.

A toll is demanded from your partner as well, she is bone-tired and chitin-creaking, but she doesn't falter, except once; she links her arm with yours in the shadow of a spiderweb, and wearily she tells you _sometimes you have to give up on people, Jake._

There is no answer to that, in you, but denial.

* * *

_from dust you were made and to dust you shall return;_

_ashes to ashes, and dust to dust._

_but not now, for fuck's sake._

_not him, please, not him._

* * *

(You are the hero, you can rescue Dirk, you are the hero, you can rescue Dirk, you are the hero -)

Like the beat of your blood or the beat of an endless drum, you cannot halt and you cannot be halted. You charge in blind, and reckless, and so what if you can barely see, so what if your head splits, so _what_ -

(- you can rescue Dirk -)

* * *

_and then with a popping noise you are standing, dizzy, on the platform._

_and _

_Jade stands before you_

_her eyes are so watery_

_and she's saying something, but _

_you lost the ability to understand what was said to you days ago_

_it's only when you look at her hands, when she_

_shows you her hands:_

_they are empty._

_it takes a minute for it to hit you._

* * *

you made a bargain with a

witch and it wasn't enough,

because in the end,

you were wrong.

if you ever believed

that you could save him,

it's only because you were

so very,

very

_stupid._

* * *

_rose reaches into your head with tendrils of soft violet flame and she pulls, the spell ripping out of you, uprooted. and you howl like a dog, a stupid dog that doesn't know how to let go, no matter how viciously it's kicked._

_when your head clears,_

_the visions are gone, and you are left with nothing but the tears on your face and the ache in your heart, the weight of your pistols at your hips._

_"jane has to let go, soon," she tells you._

_you can't breathe._

_"it's killing her. she has to stop."_

_you can't see, your vision is blurring, there's a whiteness swallowing everything._

_you are the hero -_

_"jake," she says, holding your hands._

_you can rescue -_

* * *

She is far too knowing, far too understanding as she looks into your eyes and tells you:

"Jake, you have to say goodbye, now."

* * *

_no -_


	6. Chapter 6

and as jane leaves the room and everyone hushes each other, trying to give you a moment alone with him; as they file out to relieve dave of his duty, as they go to unleash the dawn of a universe, all you can think is why didn't you tell him when you had the chance?

it echoes numbly in your skull.

what were you so afraid of?

you should have feared him dying more.

* * *

_all along i believed i could find you_

* * *

This is what Dirk Strider, best friend and Prince in every sense of the word, leaves behind:

His feet are worn with calluses, his toes are on the long side. His ankles are narrow, and sharp; almost as sharp as his knees, which are scarred over from too many skinnings, and you think, ah, yes, he grew up on water and concrete. You imagine him biting his lip as he pours isopropyl over the cuts and bandages himself, and your breath leaves you in a painful thump; he never had anyone to kiss it better, he had to learn to stitch his own wounds.

He would be annoyed, you think, at the way his hipbones jut upwards; he was quite vain, after all, quite proud of his strength, he was the sort of person who never wanted anyone to know he was hungry.

(You can't -)

Waist, torso, sick-person clavicles and limp shoulders. One _stupid_ tattoo.

(You can't See any more. The phantasmagories are gone. But you can feel life ebbing out of him, little by little, drop by drop; as though it was blood dripping from your own veins.)

A delicate neck.

His face

(you _can't_, you can't, you're so numb, you can't believe -)

his eyelashes lying against his cheeks; his mouth, barely open; you can't see his chest rise and fall but if you put your glasses in front of his face there is the slightest hint of fog on the lens. his beakish nose, his ears, his hair (it's soft) the shape of his skull (in your hands, you cradle it and you can't stay upright, you are too ruined to cry.)

his eyes are shut.

you loved his eyes, they were so lively -

are -

were -

(you _can't_)

* * *

_you know what it's like to see a body without a soul, you __**know**__, you didn't need another lesson _

_why do the people you love always have to_

* * *

And you just, you're frozen, you hold his hand and you feel his pulse get slower and slower and time is a _murderer_ that takes him from you in minutes and seconds.

Not like this.

Your tears fall like water, you can't speak, the lump in your throat is choking you.

Not like this, not so terribly and not without a fight, not with the _chance_ to fight robbed from him. No, he wouldn't want it like this.

He looks so tired.

Did he ever intend to wake up?

Was he always planning to leave?

You stay kneeling at his bedside.

* * *

_a long, long time ago, in another universe and in another time and another place, in chat logs and in transportalized presents, in swapped pictures and skype calls, in long nights up laughing and livestreamed movies and conversations that lasted until the sun was coming up, you made friends with a boy named Dirk._

_you didn't know he'd mean so much._

_staring at the night sky in cool wet grass, getting into scrapes, and shooting your banter back and forth with him as easily as firing a shot, you didn't know_

_that it would hurt;_

_you didn't know you'd love him so._

* * *

You didn't want to be afraid of him leaving you.

"Don't go," you hear yourself mutter hoarsely.

* * *

_it's not fair._

_it's not fair that the pull in your guts is as strong as ever. it's not fair that you're shaking and sweating bullets, even now, even after everyone else has given up._

_it's not -_

_how can you possibly -_

* * *

Beneath your breastbone, something

which was beating

starts to slip out of time with your pulse.

* * *

_... wait._

* * *

your eyes are saucers.

you put your hand over your sternum and

* * *

_he __**didn't -**_

* * *

And you don't have the Sight, anymore, but fuck if you need it.

You shut your eyes.

You slip into a dreamy, half-waking state; you reach out your senses

beneath your ribs.

* * *

_- he __**did.**_

* * *

The thing about the stories you've unravelled in the past month is that the seed in the center and every one of them was the same. Bluebeard, the weaving crane, the Happy Prince, Hades and Persephone, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion and Galatea, Saint George and the dragon, all of them

were, at the most basic level of their essence:

stories to do with love.

* * *

A soft and gentle light spills into the corners of the room like a rising wave. You think you hear a universe breathing into existence; you're breathing like crazy and your skin is tingling with the sense of something momentous. Around your torso, however, there is a perfect sphere of calm.

You dip your fingers through your ribs; you close them around it, and tug.

It emerges from your skin with a soft, whispering slide, like the noise of wings.

You find you had a few tears left, after all.

Gently, cupping the still-beating warmth in your hands, you lower it. You place it above his left pectoral; you lay the flat of your palm over it, and press it back, into the chest where it belongs.

* * *

_**You are the hero.**_

* * *

He coughs, once, a deep and wracking cough, and then

his eyes fly open and he

inhales.

* * *

"_Dirk,"_ you whisper. Because this isn't a dream, and it isn't a dying world, and the yearning within you hasn't decreased a bit. "Dirk."

"_Jake_," he rasps out, throat dry and his eyes wet. He licks his lips and makes a face; struggles to sit up, blinking off a rush of dizziness; he finds balance, clinging to the edge of the gurney. He looks like hell, and also sort of like a baby deer struggling to walk. Bewildered. You almost don't dare touch him, like it'll break the spell.

Outside the new universe is rising, flooding light behind you.

You suddenly remember to breathe. "You're _alive_," you sob, grateful and exhilarated and overwhelmed, and how is it possible to feel so good that it hurts, how is it possible, how on earth is any of this real? How are you so lucky? Your body is reverberating like the goddamn Sydney Philharmonic.

It's difficult to see through the tears, but you observe him, hesitantly, extend a hand to you. Like he's not quite sure if you're real; you wonder what dreams he had, beyond his mortal coil. You sense uncertainty in the pinched set of his lips, in the way he struggles to remember what it was like to have a poker face.

You decide you won't have any of that shrinking violet nonsense, damn it, and like hell will you settle for a handshake.

You gather him into your arms. He shivers like a leaf.

"You saved me," he says, muffled, into your neck, and you can feel something damp through the shoulder of your shirt, and you make shushing noises and trace your fingers up and down his spine.

"You came _back_ to me," you mutter.

"... I'm sorry," he says, choking and wavering and _fuck_ does his voice feel good on your eardrums, you only had his voice for a while and you missed it, you missed it so badly, you didn't even know. "I didn't - I didn't mean to leave."

* * *

_he tells you that_

_a long, long time ago, in another universe, _

_in another time and another place, _

_before the Game ever began, years and years ago,_

_when you were all much younger,_

_he gave you his heart._

_you tell him he shouldn't have been so careless with something so important, and_

_he says Jake, _

_i don't think i had a heart, until i gave it to you._

* * *

You hold his hands in yours, so tightly your knuckles are white. He is breathing, low and regular. Both of your faces are tearstained, red-eyed, stretched with matching grins. He had to blow his nose on the bedsheet. He hasn't brushed his teeth in weeks. He's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, you can't stop looking at him, how he moves and breathes and _exists_.

"Um," he says, and you note giddily to yourself that he can't look away from you, either. "Jake, what happened to my shades?"

"I cast them into the abyss," you tell him.

"You fucking didn't."

"I think Jane has them," you admit. You can't stop _smiling._ "Everyone - everyone was out of their minds with worry. You have no idea."

Whatever he wants to say next is cut off, because Roxy walks in expecting to pull you away from a dead body, and in under thirty seconds everyone else has managed to crowd in, as well.

Too many people try to hug you at once, and you fall over.

You laugh until you cry.

* * *

_time has brought your heart to me_

* * *

The trolls go through the Door first; Terezi is the last of them. She elbows you in the side and says _what a stunt, English, what a stunt!_ and giggles, in that shrill annoying way that has become indespensible to you.

Dave watches her stalk over the threshold and vanish. _I know, right,_ he says to you. _Fuckin' ace, man._

_You did it,_ Rose says, eyes still brimming with tears; Roxy links elbows with her and winks at you. _I'm glad I was wrong._

_You're a badass,_ John says, excited as usual. _I have the coolest parentchildren!_

Jane high-fives you. Jade hugs you, fiercely, mumbling incoherently into your chest; she's the last to leave you, standing alone on the platform with Dirk.

You guess they wanted to give you a moment alone.

* * *

"So," Dirk says, standing with you in the glow, faux-suave radiating from every pore.

"So."

"Jake, will you - do you want to go out with me?" he asks. His hands are shoved into his pockets. He does that, when he doesn't want anyone to see them shaking.

You are a little bit gobsmacked, and not in a hilarious way.

"Are you _serious?_" you ask, incredulously.

His spine stiffens. His eyes narrow. "I," he begins, heartbreakingly unsure, and falters.

"No, Strider, I will not be your middle school boyfriend. This is not a _do you like me circle yes or no _situation. I am not going to sit with you at recess and share your apple juice and bloody well help you shove crayons up your nose," you snap, crossing your arms at him. "Knock it off."

(He looks _stricken._ Possibly you are having a little too much fun.)

And he is perfectly miserable, floundering for something to say, he still doesn't _get it_. So you have mercy. You get all up in his grill, into his personal space, looping a hand around his waist. You run your other hand down the side of his face.

"Dirk," you say, raw and honest. His breath catches in his throat. "I want to be the man who makes sure you are never lonely again."

It hits him like a freight train and you get to watch it transform his face, you get to watch the weight lift from his shoulders; you get to watch it make him dizzy, like he's punch-drunk, like he can't believe it and like he just won every lottery.

He's crying again, a little.

When he can talk again he says: "You're only _seventeen_, asshole."

"Do I get to kiss you now?" you ask, and oh, your face isn't used to smiling this much, the muscles hurt.

He shudders, inclines his head, licks his lips without really thinking about it. "You did save my life," he murmurs, hesitant. Your heart skips a beat.

"Was that a yes?" you breathe against his mouth, cradling his face in your hands. He's slowly turning a light shade of pink. He nods, minutely, his eyes lidded low.

* * *

_and it's soft._

_he is warm, and alive, and he's yours._

_he moves beneath your hands, beneath your touch; his lips and tongue move against yours, terribly slowly. the blood is rushing to your head. they call it sucking face but it's gentler than that, it's_

_more like saying you love him._

_you feel there would be no victory without him; no universe to call home._

* * *

You don't know what the future holds. You don't know how to build a robot, or hold your liquor, or bake anything more complicated than toast; you don't know where the door will take you and you don't know if you're out of the frying pan and into the fire. Perhaps the battle continues; perhaps you won your peace.

You don't think you need to know.

Those things don't really matter to you.

The only certainty is this:

Whatever happens, his hand is yours for good.

And this time, _you_ will write the story.

* * *

_you lace your fingers together, firmly, and step, _

_together,_

_over the threshold._


End file.
